1800 young in Medellin sensitized to HIV: a hope

In the last week of the year 2017, we are extremely grateful for all the help we obtained from you: our Global Giving Donors. Thanks to your help, we were able to widely fulfill our goals. The prevention and sensitization of the HIV infection in the city of Medellin is our mission and an ongoing task we strive for: the only way to do this is with your help.

The latter is the reason why we reach to you today. Next year is going to be a year full of challenges for us, in all of our operational lines.

We are dreaming big: Next year we will expand the reach of our educational workshops to the wider region of Antioquia, were the city of Medellin is located.

We partnered with Fraternidad Medellin, one of Colombia’s biggest charities, who offered to co-finance all of our workshops in isolated communities all over the region. They want to match our Global Giving donations, and with the resources raised we are going to make our professionals reach underprivileged communities and schools, with a message of prevention and sensitization. This is something that will require from us an increased logistical capability, since this is the first time we are aiming to reach young people outside of the city of Medellin.

Fraternidad Medellín, one of our partners since 2006, was created in 1957 by the initiative of a group of young entrepreneurs who worried about the social problems that began to generate the industrialization of the city of Medellin. Since 2009, Fraternidad Medellín has been developing great impact projects in partnership with public and private entities.

Seeking to influence the improvement of development conditions in the Oriente, Suroeste and Urabá Antioqueño regions, Fraternidad Medellin constituted strategic units aiming to enhance education and infrastructure quality. Enhancing sexual education quality is where we are planning on playing a role during the year 2018. Today, the last day of 2018, we ask you to help us spread our dream of reaching more and more young people. Without your help, the growth of our initiatives would be unimaginable. And by the way: Happy New Year! 

Dear donors, 

As you probably know, the goals of our project were widely fulfilled in our first year of implementation!

Nevertheless, the prevention and sensitization of the HIV infection in the city of Medellin is our mission and an ongoing task we strive for.   

Our itinerant educational exhibition financed thanks to the resources obtained through GG continues traveling the city of Medellin, having an impact in different educational institutions. Our exhibition "HIV: Know and Decide" carries a message of self-care and self-determination of ones own sexual health.  

In addition to that, during 2017 we have been able to reach more than 500 young people with our workshops that add to the 907 of the year 2016. 

This time, we would like to highlight the workshops we have done with the participants of the program U-Incluye of the University of Antioquia. With around 40.000 students, the University of Antioquia is one of the largest and most reputable public higher-education institutions in Colombia.

U-Incluye operates in the broad academic environment of the University of Antioquia and is a one-of-a-kind program that purports an innovative path to higher education for people with cognitive limitations such as the ones caused by the Down Syndrome. We partnered with them in a cooperation framework where 19 of the benefited participants of the program participated in one of our 3-Sessions Educational Workshops.

1. First Session: The main subjects treated during the first meeting were the concept of sexuality, self-care and diversity.
2. Second Session: In the second meeting, we mainly dealt with the topic of love, providing tools for them to differentiate love from the filial, the social and the personal perspectives. In addition to that, we reviewed with them the area of choice of partners. Furthermore, we explored the type of relationships they recognize, live and can build. Finally, we talked about the different ways of loving and the kinds of expressions of affection that there are.
3. Third Session: During the third and last meeting we based our educational material on the topic of prevention of sexual violence and the activation of the so called "self-care routes".

In our workshops, we include techniques that involve visual and manual narratives, adusting our usual contents to the specific audience of U-Incluye. We believe that knowledge is built with and transmitted to people in a wide variety of ways. Sexual education and sensitization is not an exemption of that.

The participants of U-Incluye are in general more vulnerable and have fewer options in our social context when it comes down to sexual education. They are also highly capable and highly motivated individuals that show their desire to play an active role to the service of society. We are glad we were able to expand the reach of our workshops to other type of audiences and until next time! 

Your SiFuturo Team 

The 21st and 22nd of April we met Maria and Star. Maria works as GlobalGiving´s country representative in Colombia.

Star was accompanying Maria´s field travels and works for Global Giving too. Together with Sifuturo´s legal representative Mariluz, our Director Luz Beatriz and Caterine, our workshop guide, they visited some of our projects in the city of Medellín, Colombia

Their journey began in a public school in the outskirts of the city. Our educational exhibition "Vih: Conoce and Decide" was displayed in there.  This exhibition was entirely financed thanks to the resourcews obtained throurgh GlobalGiving´s plataform.

Then they visited our facilities inside of La Maria Hospital. Star and Maria could witness a job skills workshop for the mother of our foundation together with the music workshop for the kids. The music workshop are possible  thanks a cooperation we achieved some time ago with the Yamaha Foundation. 

To defeat the fear, some youth are considered immune to any danger. They are covered by the breastplate of the omnipotence and put in risk their future and their life. Until one day they discovery that they are not immortal" Flavio Gikovate

Frequently, the adolescents considered that they are free of risks and that the problems will not affect them; they are not aware of the dangers and minimize the facts. The decisions taken by them, and especially those related with their sexuality should be backed by a complete information that will allow them to make free, responsible and consensual choices.  (Of our exhibition "Know and Decide")

At SiFuturo we are happy because we were able to meet our goal of reaching more than 1800 young people in order to sensitize them about the HIV virus during the year 2016. Thanks to all of you - our Global Giving benefactors:

-The prevention  workshops ended up directly benefiting more than 907 young people.

-In addition to that, the installation of our itinerary educational exhibition called "HIV: Know and Decide" was possible thanks to the resources raised through the platform.   The itinerary exhibition was first displayed at the Research Headquarters of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Antioquia. In our guided tour of the exhibition, we counted with the presence of more than 200 students and subsequently other additional 300 attendees. 

-Furthermore, and once again, thanks to the resources we happily obtained from you through GlobalGiving, we managed to fully develop an artistic line within the foundation. "HIV: a Glance through Art” was our first official artistic exhibition. The entity that hosted the exhibition (Comfenalco Antioquia, one of Colombia’s largest social investment funds) certified more than 3500 attendees. That certification was received by the foundation in January of this very same year.

2017 is our second year being a vetted organization by GlobalGiving. We dedicated the first months of this year to the coordination and execution of the following activities that comprise:

1)     The continuation of our prevention workshops for young people, both in public and private education institutions in the city of Medellin.

2)     Raising awareness among young people about the HIV infection and its related aspects, helped by the structuring of our artistic line.

3)     Taking our educational itinerary exhibition to various places so we can increase the reach of the prevention and sensitization message it purports. In order to accomplish that aim, we partnered with the University of Medellin and the Remington University. We are expecting to set a date to coordinate the installation of the exhibition in their facilities.  

4)     We are planning to carry out a second version of the artistic exhibition "HIV: a Glance through Art” by December 1, 2017.

We envisioned our foundation to be the carrier of a message of prevention of the HIV infection in the city. The latter through our newly developed artistic line and in order to achieve a higher order goal that is to have an entire generation free of HIV. We seek to spread our message using a language that connects both the soul and allows for a diversity of thoughts.

In April, we are expecting to meet Maria Acevedo in our facilities. She is a representative of GlobalGiving that will personally visit our projects in order to further explore cooperation possibilities between the platform and our foundation.  

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in different places of the world is stable with tendency to the decrease, but in Colombia, in particular in Medellin the epidemic is increasing; in fact, 800 persons are diagnosed with HIV every year, most of them between 16 and 26 years of age.

The project: "1800 young sensitized towards the HIV, a hope" seeks to contribute with the prevention of this infection, aiming to decrease the number of new infections and the stigma associated to it while increasing the social acceptance of the infected individuals. This project consists of three axes: art, communication and prevention.

1. Art: The 1^st of December, the international day of fight against the HIV, was the opening of the artistic exhibition "HIV, a look through the art". This exhibition was the result of an artistic call that was made in various art departments of different schools and universities, including the Institute of fine arts of Medellin and the University of Antioquia, in particular with students of the Faculties of Art and Medicine. This artistic call was carried out along with workshops seeking a better sensitization of the artists with the specific subject of HIV. The exhibition was carried out at the showroom of the COMFENALCO library, in downtown, Medellin, a space that is usually visited by young students of different local institutions. Attached is a video of the opening exhibition.
2. Communication: There was an educational photo display that opened in September, at the research headquarters of the University of Antioquia, a space that is frequently visited by high school and young university students; in fact, more than 200 hundred students had a guided visit through this exhibition, along with sensitization talks on the subject, plus the regular daily visitors. It includes 12 photographs with a current and modern graphic concept that was oriented by HIV-1 infected persons. The exhibition has been very well taken, and the idea is to display it at several different places in 2017, including educational parks, libraries, and college museums, among others. Collages of the photo display and of different visitors comments are attached.
3. Prevention: The educational intervention has been carried out with 907 high school adolescents in 54 different didactic encounters from different institutions. Of these, 27 meetings were psychosocial oriented, emphasizing on the importance of practicing a responsible sexuality. The additional 27 encounters were carried-out with scientists, experts in the subject, who strengthened concepts on HIV, including transmission routes, prevention strategies, AIDS, among others. The discussion was oriented based on the film "Transit". The SiFuturo Foundation team and scientists from the Immunovirology Group, School of Medicine, University of Antioquia were the leaders of these meetings.Written material was design as communication pieces for these educational activities, and also to call for the art and the educational exhibition (material attached)

2017 will be a year to give continuity to this initiative that leaves a positive balance, facing the high demand that arises in the context of education. The Foundation will continue the work on HIV prevention, sensitizing as much young people as possible. Similarly, art takes the city to convey realities from other perspectives, to express human contents in an easy and comfortable way. Hoinge that the initiative "HIV a look through the art" continues to be part of the social dynamic that redefines experiences and immortalizes stories.

Links:

• HIV, a look through the art

• Artistic call (PDF)