Dombila fights HIV/AIDS

These are pictures from the World AIDS Day Celebration (Dec. 1) in Dombila.

Since school started in early October, I have been training a group of peer educators in whats called the "Life Skills Program". It is an international Peace Corps initiative, recently translated into Bambara, aiming to teach HIV/AIDS basics to youth while helping them develop communication, relationship, and decision making skills. Much better than my previous attempt as sex education, this program is active and focused on real youth issues. I had about 15 volunteer 7th, 8th, and 9th graders who met after school once a week for about two hours. Of course, we had stumbling blocks: getting the girls confident enough to speak in front of their peers, disruptions from younger kids, etc. But in all, it was a really positive experience and I've enjoyed so much getting to know these kids. I conducted post-interviews with all of the participats, to find out how the Life Skills Program can be improved for future volunteers. Yes it was disheartening to see that many of the girls dropped out of the group. But I knew that it was worth it during my interview with one of my favorite kids, Keleke.

"What did you like about Life Skills?"
"I liked the skits, the games..."
"What didn't you like about Life Skills?"
"Ehhh Aminata!" he laughs as he shakes his head, "I liked it all!"

Through games, skits and other activities, these youth have become local HIV experts and tell how their friends have asked them about a number of adolescent issues. The group put together an awareness day for December 1st. As I have also become a gym teacher at the high school, we naturally incoporated running and had a big relay race announced on a loudspeaker for the whole village to watch. In between the boys and girls races, the Life Skills participants performed two skits on HIV/AIDS and good decision making. We then had a showing of a film, followed by discussion questions at the CSCOM. My sitemate Lauren estimated that over 250 people showed up for the event. All of this was done by villagers pitching in and helping out- no outside funding. Yay Dombila!