By Morven Williamson | Project Leader
At the beginning of this season of giving, we are thankful for all donations that are making this project a reality. Mozambican university students are often not the focus for HIV and health education programs because they are 'educated'. The privilege of higher education does not eradicate stigma and fear so they face the same challenges as anyone else when it comes to making positive choices around HIV. Our Saber é Viver - To Know is to Live - program is aimed at destigmatising HIV and changing the direction of HIV in Mozambique.
The rectors of the 2 largest universities in Mozambique, University Eduardo Mondlane and University Pedagogico, are enthusiastially supporting our planning process to bring the program to their students. With universities closed between November - February we will implement in the first half of 2018. We will be sure to provide some amazing images and stories.
The program will include activities to learn about how anti-retroviral treatment works in the body and why you should not stop treatment as soon as you feel better, as is often the case in Mozambique. There will be theatre groups performing interactive, short plays relevant to the lives of students, HIV advocates relaying their personal stories and how treatment works for them, inspirational speakers who are role models of youth interacting with students about behaviour and making positive choices, famous musicians who support and relay our messages, high level personalities speaking about HIV and positive behaviours, question and answers with HIV advocates, inspirational speakers and clinical experts. There are further discussions on other related health issues and there will be a health fair offering HIV testing, blood pressure testing, diabetes testing etc. We continue our engagement with the students through social media where they can access more information and ask us and other followers questions.
The other amazing news is that, having raised funds through GlobalGiving for universities, we have managed to engage a large organisation to work with us to develop it to become national program for universities. This is at the concept stage but we would not have been able to do this without GlobalGiving donations.
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