The heavy toll of HIV on the 14- to 25-year-old age group haunts us all. One possible remedy is to provide a higher quality education to enable learners to step into a future that offers some promise. But we know that is not enough.
I would like to suggest that we have not fully tapped into one important resource to fight HIV in schools – the learners themselves.
While working in mainstream schools with HIV volunteer leaders, I found it was not difficult to come up with ideas to raise HIV awareness at assemblies. One learner with great acting abilities, dressed up as a mother with a baby in arms, brought the house down in a balloon debate at Athlone Boys’ High School. At Jeppe Boys’ High, HIV volunteer leaders competed with a debating team made up of highly practised and talented speakers. At Florida Park High the HIV leaders ran an entire assembly with aplomb.
You may want to implement some of the following suggestions with a team of senior volunteers:
Present poetry written by learners on the topic of HIV and Aids. This could take the form of a competition.
Select a topic such as “stigma” and collect material to emphasise the urgency to stamp it out. An example is Mandela’s public announcement to the press that his son had died of Aids.
Tell a true HIV story or act it out.
Pass on updated information gleaned from newspapers, including the fact that ARVs have been given the name “Lazarus drugs” because they can just about bring people back from the dead.
About 42% of the population in South Africa is under 20 years of age. The downside of this population youth bubble is that new infections among young people fuel the HIV epidemic – they are the fire that keeps it going.
The upside is that young people have the power to stop the tidal wave of HIV, because they tend to follow norms of behaviour. At the moment these norms lead to HIV infection, but if teenagers shift these norms they can bring down the overall HIV-infection rate in a big way.
One of the big reasons why young people between the ages of 18 and 24 fall prey to HIV is the fact that they are the poorest age group in South Africa, even poorer than pensioners and children. Many of them live in informal settlements, are poorly educated or school drop-outs and have little hope of getting a job.
It is easy to understand why girls in this group would exchange sex for basic needs such as food, clothes and school fees. Alcohol and drugs also lead to irresponsible sexual behaviour.
Educated people took the lead in the fight to eliminate HIV in Uganda and the result was a dramatic decline in the infection rate. But we do not have to wait until we are adults to play a role in the fight against HIV.
Young people in our schools can – and must – join the struggle against HIV and Aids.