Our World AIDS activity ...

Today, 1 December as you probably know is
World AIDS Day.

In the village we had a few activities to bring
awareness of World AIDS Day to the community
and especially to the youth. It has been told to me
that many of the people here haven't even heard of
this day.

We organized a mini netball and soccer tournament
as a way to bring attention to the topic of the day.

In the picture, the community counselor from the health
clinic (second man from left in black shirt) and the youth
officer (man on the left) are giving out the first and second
place prizes to the netball squads.

There was a small sum of prize money for the teams.
It was about 7 dollars USD for first and 3.50 for
second. It was only an amount to go out and buy some
fatcakes and some type of drink that they make out of
corn meal. Or anything else that they wanted to get.

With limited resources there wasn't much else we
could do but despite that, it came out ok.

I really doubted that it was going to work and thought
that for that small amount that there wasn't going
to be much interest but, surprisingly, there was. There
had to be at least 50 to 75 people at the netball game
and easily double that at the soccer match. Plus, the
vast majority was youth.

In the end I was pretty happy with the way that it worked
out. It was a community based and funded activity
that hit it's target group (youth) with the information
about what was World AIDS Day and it's meaning.

I always feel that we are on the right track when we
can do things like this with our own initiative.

Tomorrow I will do an informal verbal questionnaire
in the village and see if was something that we may
be able to replicate on other special days. If it can be,
then we can have quite a few days like this.

We probably didn't make a huge impact today, but
that's ok. Just like the tortoise and the hare, slow,
humble and steady can win a race too.