Charlene Smith
An innovative project in Pietermari-tzburg is using soccer and soccer players to spread Aids awareness in the highly infected province.
Gethwane Makhaye of Targeted Aids Intervention first began using soccer as a way of teaching young people about Aids some years ago, after she had finished a pilot study for Unicef that looked at different ways of communicating HIV prevention to young people.
Gethwane began with one team, training them about HIV and encouraging them to chat to other teams in the changeroom before and after matches.
This has proved so successful that often after a match the two teams will move into the community speaking to taxi-drivers, pedestrians and school children about HIV how to prevent it and how to live with it. The soccer players’ girlfriends also become involved in discussions and so do parents, and in this way it ripples through communities.
The project has proven so successful that it has attracted funding from Australia, interest from Canada and the Medical Research Council with the intent of taking up the idea on a wider scale.
The project is evolving, Gethwane says: “We have added two modules: looking at growing up and finding out how young people perceive this.
“People from different areas have different beliefs, secondary school children believe strongly that having sex with a virgin will cure Aids, and this is despite the fact that in sexual health workshops we say this is not true. I asked a doctor that I work with at Edendale hospital where we get most child abuse from, and the highest numbers are from those areas that believe the virgin myth.”
Gethwane says that “because there is such a high incidence of HIV in our areas, we are workshopping with school students how they should go about helping their school friends who are infected.”
She says that Targeted Aids Intervention is organising counselling for schoolchildren to see how many are orphans, for an analysis that will be produced in June to enhance ways of helping children to cope.
“We want schools to come up with projects on HIV/Aids, but nothing sustainable is happening. We want to encourage sharing so people can learn from each other, we are organising competitions for schools, and we are putting in place HIV-education programmes for parents. The school with the best programme will get a trophy in April.
The project is now stimulating schoolchildren to come up with innovative ideas of providing other support to fellow pupils who come from poor households.
“The kids came up with amazing ideas,” says Gethwane, referring to a
suggestion by one boy who offered to share his lunch with a friend. “If I carry food to school maybe I can share it with Siphiwe, or maybe 10 of us who are real friends can give a third of our food to a friend, we can talk about it with our parents.”
Gethwane says through workshops there is also a change in the behaviour of young people, and how they relate to their friends particularly with regard to being more empathetic to those who come from families affected by the HIV/Aids scourge.
Targeted Aids Intervention manages 20 soccer teams.