YOUTH RESPONSES AROUND THE WORLD

You've just read about conversations with youth and youth workers on what is and what should be happening on the HIV/AIDS scene in Canada. We will now look briefly at how youth in other countries are responding to the global crisis, and list some pointers for initiating a successful youth and HIV/AIDS project. Perhaps reading about what has worked in other contexts will inspire you to "import" and activate a model in your own area, or will spark a whole chain of other ideas…

REALITY CHECK

At the end of 2001, 12 million young people were living with HIV/AIDS and more than 7000 youth have become newly infected each day since.

What do these figures really mean? What do they mean for young people in the most seriously affected areas - for example, in sub-Saharan Africa where more than 70% of HIV-positive youth live? Well, if a medium to large high school in Canada has about 1500 students, that's more than 4 high schools per day in which the entire student population becomes HIV-positive. And that's just young people.

GLOBAL TARGETS

The news is not all discouraging. With strong national strategies, combining the efforts and expertise of government, private sector, and NGOs, countries like Brazil, Thailand, Uganda, and Senegal are turning the epidemic around in their countries. For example, Thailand has reduced its infection rate from 140,000 per year a decade ago to 30,000 per year now. In Uganda, HIV prevalence among pregnant women has fallen from 29% in 1992 to 11% in 2000.

There is growing global momentum too. World leaders agreed to pursue common targets at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS in June of 2001; and in August of 2001, youth leaders at the Fourth World Youth Forum in Dakar, Senegal - in slightly stronger language - called upon governments to fulfil these commitments with the participation of youth and civil society.

In the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, Member States of the UN declared the global HIV/AIDS epidemic a "global emergency" and agreed to:

• develop and implement, with the participation of youth, national strategies for combating HIV/AIDS including financing plans (by 2003)
  
  
• reduce HIV prevalence by 25% among youth aged 15-24 (by 2010)
  
  
• ensure that 90% of youth aged 15-24 have access to information, education, and services necessary to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection (by 2005)

YOUTH STRATEGIES

Youth everywhere are already responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis - in youth to youth initiatives and outreach to the broader community, at local, national, regional, and global levels. Here are a few examples.

Turning the tables
u kenya

Africa Alive! is a network of African youth organizations promoting AIDS prevention and safe sexual behaviour through the medium of popular entertainment. The prevention message is integrated in comics, music lyrics, public service announcements with entertainers, articles in newspapers and magazines, and TV shows, to name a few.

In Kenya, while 14% of the adult population (ages 15-49) was HIV-positive at the end of 1999, prevalence among specific populations (e.g. pregnant women, youth, sex workers) can be much higher. Among tested sex workers in Nairobi, HIV prevalence is extremely high: 62% in 1985, rising to 82% by 1992.

Africa Alive!'s Kenya chapter saw that DJs were uniquely placed to reach youth with key messages on reducing risky behaviour. They work in nightclubs: places where young people - male and female - congregate, drink, mix, dance, and possibly meet new sexual partners. DJs are the driving force behind the medium of entertainment - and tend to be role models too.

After attending a training workshop on integrating HIV/AIDS prevention messages into their shows, club DJs in Mombasa, Nairobi, Kisumu, and Eldoret have started bringing those messages to some of the hotspots for urban nightlife. Preliminary results have shown that in the relaxed and fun atmosphere of a nightclub, youth audiences are open to the message.

Web address: www.africaalive.org

Respect and credibility are important when it comes to communicating with youth. Being a role model is one way. Having firsthand experience of the issues is another. Edwin Odera, a young person living with HIV/AIDS, spearheaded a campaign for students to establish and run Anti-AIDS clubs in their schools. Working with the Kenya Society for People with AIDS (KEPSA) in western Kenya, Odera inspired thousands of students to link with each other in schools and direct their own actions on HIV/AIDS. Odera died of AIDS in June 1997, but his campaign is carried on by KEPSA.

Web address: www.annea.or.tz

From outrage to action
u united states

Just as students and young people in the US have mobilized in the past to protest war, apartheid, and civil rights abuses, the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) is organizing youth in the US to fight the global HIV/AIDS pandemic - by taking aim at their own government's policies.

While only 3.79% of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS are from the developed world, the vast majority of annual HIV/AIDS expenditures is still spent in wealthy, industrialized countries like the US.

Coordinated advocacy, education, training, and direct action by hundreds of members across the country push for vastly increased US global AIDS spending, total bilateral and multilateral debt cancellation, and guaranteed access to treatment and care.

A straightforward "What Can I Do?" list on their website encourages members (and site visitors) to communicate with their elected officials, become an active member of a local branch of SGAC, do media outreach work, organize a regional conference, or become a 'national leader' of the campaign by strategizing and leading national work on topics ranging from lobbying to chapter development, research and education, and international partnerships.

Web address: www.fightglobalaids.org

Dead men don't play
u south africa

Soccer is somewhat unique in having mass male participation, as both players and supporters, and particularly among the age range that is most vulnerable to HIV infection: young men. It is played and has widespread appeal in both rural and urban areas. And it receives a tremendous amount of media coverage. These are the ingredients for a powerful public education campaign.

In South Africa, a woman is leading teams of young male soccer players engaged in the Shosholoza Programme. Gethwana Makhaye started her HIV/AIDS work with women, but soon realized that awareness raising and behaviour change initiatives targeted only to women were missing an important part of the equation. The young male players engaged in her programme undergo training to become peer educators - a training regimen involving counselling, group work, even sewing - and then speak when or wherever they can to others about HIV/AIDS prevention, sexuality, and gender equality, encouraging those around them to change their behaviour by way of example.

At the end of 1999, already 20% of the adult population in South Africa was HIV-positive and current prevalence among youth is thought to be still higher. In the province where Makhaye works, KwaZulu-Natal, 36.2% of pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in 2000 were HIV-positive.

In this climate, there are strong reasons for these ambitious youth to train with Shosholoza and to heed the prevention messages. The programme is clear on this: they won't be able to play with the revered national team, Bafana Bafana, if they're dead.

Youth in showbiz
u bangladesh

A recent study in Bangladesh found that 96% of girls and 88% of boys between the ages of 15 and 19 did not know of any way to protect themselves against HIV infection. Prevention education efforts are not working.

Youth volunteers with the Family Planning Association of Bangladesh (FPAB) are experimenting with using mass media as a means of reaching young people: they are in the business of making TV shows that will help carry important health information to a mass audience.

Following the success of several radio and TV talk show programmes on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, FPAB decided to produce a seven-episode TV drama incorporating HIV/AIDS issues and other social and health topics of concern to young people. This time though, young people played a key role in designing the series, making sure that messages communicated through the script were youth-friendly, relevant to both urban and rural youth needs, and appealing. The new approach worked: after airing, 60,000 viewers wrote in to comment on the series.

Web address: www.ippf.org

The writing's on the wall
u canada

One of the significant and emerging risks among youth in Canada is a sense of invincibility vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS. Some youth feel that drug therapies will save them - and their quality of life - if they become HIV-positive, and others believe that HIV/AIDS is only a risk for certain groups. But all youth are at risk of HIV infection. Prevention education is clearly still a necessity, and the need for it is growing.

The Canadian AIDS Society (CAS), a national coalition of community-based AIDS organizations, is experimenting with using art - graffiti mural art - to engage and educate youth in HIV/AIDS prevention, and to get youth to educate others through art. In collaboration with a professional artists' collective, CAS is launching an HIV/AIDS graffiti project to empower the youth involved in creating the mural and to bring a powerful prevention message to a much wider audience through public art.

Youth are involved in all aspects of the project from planning and fundraising to publicity and evaluation. And 'expression' is not restricted to the graffiti art itself. Project participants are responsible for producing communications and promotional materials (including newspaper articles, posters, rave cards), planning and carrying out the graffiti work, and launching the mural. The preliminary 5-day workshop focuses on HIV/AIDS education - ensuring that this theme informs their graffiti work - as well as practical art training.

Web address: www.cdnaids.ca

WHAT WORKS? LESSONS FROM 20 YEARS OF PRACTICE

The above are just of few of the diverse examples of how youth are effectively responding to the global HIV/AIDS crisis. What do these examples have in common and what do you need to know to ensure that your initiative can be effective too?

In 2001, UNESCO and UNAIDS prepared a guidebook for youth organizations on HIV/AIDS and human rights, focusing on public education, peer education, advocacy, and care and support initiatives. They found that the most successful programmes in these theme areas share the following characteristics:

• they involve people living with HIV, and the wider community, in all stages (in planning, implementation and evaluation)
  
  
• they recognize the realities that people face in their daily lives, and take people's own needs and interests as a starting point (rather than, for example, start from their own assumptions about people's knowledge, beliefs or attitudes)
  
  
• they create open attitudes and accept how people are (rather than be critical or judgemental)
  
  
• they use positive images and friendly messages (not frightening or authoritarian)
  
  
• they develop skills and knowledge (rather than tell people what to do)
  
  
• they win support from people in positions of authority (for example teachers, doctors, religious leaders, professional associations, government officials)
  
  
• they recognize that even well planned approaches sometimes fail (and, therefore, review progress and adjust the programme when needed)
  
  
• they carry out some form of evaluation, however brief (so that the activity can be replicated or improved by the same group or by others in the future)

If your planned initiative is a public education campaign, they recommend that you:

• consult and involve relevant community groups, including people living with HIV/AIDS
  
  
• make your messages short, direct, and adapted to the target group's lifestyle and motivations
  
  
• test images and messages by getting reactions from a representative sample of people
  
  
• be provocative and controversial if needed, but avoid offending others
  
  
• present positive images; remember that people living with HIV and AIDS have the right to lead full lives for a long time
  
  
• aim to motivate people - this works better than telling them what they have to do

OUT THERE

So, what now? Well - we hope that this report has increased your understanding of the global HIV/AIDS crisis. And even more so, we hope that you are inspired to get up and get going in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Be unique in the way that you get involved - "off the wall" (though still well planned!) ideas are sometimes the most effective.

Keep up-to-date on what's happening: on the global HIV/AIDS situation, what youth are doing globally, what your government is doing, and what initiatives are taking place in your own community.

And finally - though it really comes first - continue to challenge and change your own behaviour and attitudes.