National Launching of AIDS Awareness Week

The Ministry of Education in Mariental was asked to host the national
launching of AIDS Awareness Week. I am part of the Regional AIDS
Committee for Education (RACE) which headed up the whole thing. The
week before the event, the week of my dad's accident, the rest of the
organizing committee was out of the office. I was left in charge of
the final preparations. Thankfully most of the team had their
sections organized AND one of the secretaries jumped in a helped my A
LOT with phoning schools and finalizing last details!

Monday, June 18 came and went and the national launching of AIDS
Awareness Week turned out just fine :-) It ended up being a HUGE
event at our soccer stadium involving all of the region's school and
all of the national ministries as well as many community
organizations. Four school groups from Hardap Region were invited to
present HIV programs from their schools (Window of Hope, My Future is
My Choice, and AIDS clubs as well). Famous Namibian artists (the
Namibian equivalents of Akon or Black Eyed Peas) were invited and
gave positive messages about HIV and performed in between speakers
from national and international organizations. The grade 8-12 kids
from the local schools were there as well as members of the community
at large.

Here are some comments shared between Megan and I via sms during the
event. Megan was sitting with her students and I was running around
behind the scenes getting school groups ready to present and helping
the program to flow.

"this guy is fun, i even want to jump around and dance" - to megan
during Phura's first performance

"this is almost more than i can handle, 800 kids, 10 listening, no
one knows what NANTU is" - from megan during NANTU representative's
speech on teacher unions' involvement in fight against HIV

"positive speaker up next, kids should really like her" - to megan
during NANTU speech

"i really like this lady, she is great" - from megan during positive
speaker

As you can see it was a mixture of engaging, entertaining, and boring
to be honest. The positive speaker is a woman who has been living
with HIV for 15 years now and does a lot of public speaking about
education and prevention, focusing on youth and their responsibility
in taking control of their future with the choices they make! She
really got the kids attention and the whole place was quiet while she
was speaking openly about safe sex and the responsibility of the
youth for HIV education, not just the teachers' responsibility.
Overall, the event turned out well. Ah, first big project checked
off the list for the week!