^{HIV Aids Initiatives continue to educate communities}

^{Due to steady advancements in medical technology, HIV/Aids is no longer the automatic death sentence it used to be. While this fact is formally and rightly celebrated each year on December 1, World Aids Day, there have been equally significant, though arguably less heralded, advances in a host of other areas surrounding the dreaded disease.}

^{Not least of these are the numerous efforts to improve HIV/Aids education, particularly within South Africa’s many still-disadvantaged areas, where destructive myths about the virus run every bit as rampant as the disease itself.}

^{“Faced with one of the highest infection rates in the world, it is easy for South Africans to think that, for all the collective progress being made, when it comes to HIV/Aids it remains a case of ‘one step forward, two steps back’,” says Ann Pretorius, co-founder of South African-founded humanitarian aid relief organisation, Joint Aid Management International (JAM) and MD of JAM South Africa.}

^{Yet programmes such as those created by JAM in partnership with multinational food giant, Kelloggs, give lie to this understandable but fallacious belief.}

^{Forged in 2008, the JAM-Kelloggs partnership began with the establishment of a Corporate Citizenship Fund (KCCF) aimed at implementing health-focused programming in South Africa. Pretorius expounds that KCCF funding is channeled toward the Tshepo Ya Rona (TYR) Programme that is run in ten farm schools within the Gauteng and Mpumalanga Provinces. While components of this programme include such vital topics as drugs, alcohol abuse and teenage pregnancy, HIV/Aids is a primary focus and, happily, their reach has been spreading like wildfire.}

^{Since August 2009, JAM has focused on and strengthened the TYR Programme, which strives to provide holistic care and support to students, teachers and parents in farm communities. Originally working in 6 target schools, JAM has successfully expanded the programme and has reached literally thousands of beneficiaries over the past 3 years.}

^{While there are plans for further expansion after 2012, a look at the intervention’s progress and achievements already makes for uplifting reading.}

^{Until now, the in-school peer education component of the initiative has trained over 300 peer educators. The beauty of the design is that each of the trained students is tasked with imparting their new-found knowledge to their fellow learners, thereby enabling critical information to diffuse across entire schools.}

^{This is achieved in two ways: firstly, during their free periods, peer educators go into other classrooms (accompanied by their Life Orientation teacher) and give presentations on topics such as HIV/AIDS, following which they answer questions from the class. Secondly, they discuss the issues covered through the training with their friends in one-on-one sessions, either during breaks or at home. Each month, the peer educators from each school meet with a JAM staff member to report back on the classrooms they presented to, as well as any individual meetings they held with their friends. During these meetings they also discuss any challenges and successes they have had, and post-assessments of behaviour are then carried out.}

^{As of October 2011, the number of peers reached by peer educators alone is 5,400, with a target of 6000 achievable by the end of December, 2011.}

^{Yet it isn’t only children who benefit.}

^{During the parent-peer phase of the TYR programme, 160 parent-peer educators were trained by JAM staff. These parents, who live in 9 communities surrounding the participating schools, were trained in many of the same topics, with the important distinction that they are also trained to educate about HIV/AIDS, sex and sexuality with children.}

^{As of October, these parents had reached a total of 2100 parents, with an attainable goal of 3600 being reached by the end of December 2011.}

^{Pretorius explains that 2012 and beyond will see even greater and faster growth.}

^{“HIV/AIDS and providing support to the most vulnerable members of the farming communities remains the highest priority at the ten participating schools. One of the most significant challenges is the large numbers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) found in each school. These children have minimal familial support and a lack of reliable information about the disease and related issues. They also suffer from extreme poverty and are generally at extremely high risk.”}

^{With this in mind, budget for the 12-month period of August 1, 2011 to July 31, 2012, is $100,000. This sum is being used to train a further 300 peer educators, as well as 200 more parent-peer educators to help other adults in their communities become better, more active parents and role models for children. Together this will provide more than 6,000 additional learners with HIV/AIDS education, and will similarly equip more than 1,500 adults, all of whom will spread their knowledge as far and wide as possible.}

^{Clearly, then, initiatives like these are playing HIV/Aids at its own game: ‘infecting’ a few ‘cells’ – in this case learners and parents – with education, and then letting those cells spread life-saving knowledge across schools and communities. In the process, they are helping to turn the tide against HIV/Aids.}

^{(For more information, contact JAM at +27 11 548 3900, or visit www.jamint.com or www.jamint.co.za)}

^{-Steven Chiaberta}