With the landscape changing dramatically and undeniably for newer generations, we now see stronger opposition from the same proponents that have been waging the abstinence-only fight for years, with much support coming from religious institutions. Just recently, the National Abstinence Education Association began the Parents for Truth campaign aimed at enlisting over 1 million adults in a lobbying effort against comprehensive sex education in public schools. At the same time, health care providers at Planned Parenthood, an organization that supports reproductive freedom, cite studies that show teaching abstinence in schools does nothing to curb sexual behavior for teenagers in the long run. Many say that if things are changing, the way we talk to kids needs to change. The general assumption is that there is more honesty and less sugarcoating of information for our kids, and we could benefit from filtering and articulating the barrage of information about sex so that children can still learn the facts and what is morally sound from their parents. This might mean more pressure on parents to have the “sex talk” at earlier ages.

Is there a problem in having the wrong information versus having no information? What do the competing viewpoints of the media, churches, and parents suggest about how our culture is changing and the ways we think about sex? Why do you think there so much controversy? And what about the bigger issue of sex education and its place in schools, the main source of information for our children: is there a right or wrong way to teach or learn about it?

*Written by Ashley Villarreal, TDN Local Health Reporter

Definition of Community

1: A group of people living together in one place, esp. one practicing common ownership. 2: A group of people having a religion, race, profession, or other particular characteristic in common. 3: A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. 4. Ecology a group of interdependent organisms of different species growing or living together in a specified habitat. 

Kenscoff is located in Port au Prince, Haiti.  Although the capital is dense and dusty, and fast, a few miles away and 45 minutes on a tap-tap up hills and curves lies Kenscoff.  The air is considerably cooler and villages are abundant.  People are friendly and say hello to one another and it is here that C.O.H.E.F. hosts a free summer camp every summer for children of all ages.  Elsie Craig, the founder of C.O.H.E.F. liaises with Janie Wynne, a staple in the community, to organize and provide services for the children in the area (who travel near and far, on foot, to attend camp- something they would never experience otherwise).  Young men and women have volunteered every summer for the past 4 years and continue to lead workshops on music, Haitian dance, environment, life skills, yoga, natural medicine, painting, and sports, and arts.  It is here that I met potential young leaders like Amouskov, the tall, basketball playing volunteer who amused the children and kept the camp organized and led meetings every day before and after camp; Blaise, who took a week off from his job at the bank to organize and run the camp with a spiritual demeanor due to his work as a young pastor; Nathalie who made everyone laugh and knows every child, woman and man in Kenscoff and kept children and adults involved in limbo with her infectious voice and laughter; and Taina who volunteered this year with enthusiasm and a zest for life, despite losing her hand in a car accident last year, surviving two of her friends who never made it that fateful day.  Volunteers from Miami, Gonaives and me, from NY attended camp, rose at 6 am daily and worked tirelessly to infuse the youth with the annual theme: “an nou plante la pe,” or let us plant peace.  It is a known fact that children involved in the arts, and children that have an opportunity to be involved with a healthy functional adult are more likely to succeed and less likely to engage in sexual intercourse recklessly.  This means that they are also less likely to fall prey to HIV infection.  Each child at the C.O.H.E.F. camp was given structure and introduced to the idea of empowerment through meaningful interaction and powerful exchange that they would not have experienced otherwise.  The exchange of ideas and the voluntary participation from individuals, and the healthy interaction of each day and each moment give new vision to the word community and to the fight against HIV/AIDS, which lies in prevention and education.  Together, the children, volunteers from abroad, and volunteers from Haiti chanted “an nou plante la pe,” simultaneously sowing the seeds of HIV/AIDS prevention. 

Peace is a word not usually associated with the Batey- an area on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic where sugar cane field workers live, work, and constant racial tensions are rampant.  In Batey Ocho something else has been happening and community is alive, sometimes turbulent, and strong in this isolated area.  Within the mix of Dominicans, Dominicans of Haitian decent, and Haitian migrant workers something special is happening.  For 7-weeks over the course of July and August a group of students from NY live, work, and do community service in Batey Ocho.  Through Global Potential, these high school students are prepped for their 7-week life changing journey where they integrate and become one with local residents.  Students like Xiang, Leo and Freddy interned at City Hall and took ownership of projects like a Batey Ocho census.  Other students like Darlene and Stebeli interned at the Batey’s clinic, while Donald, Christian, Jean and Carizma held after school workshops and activities for youth, and worked alongside the Batey’s Peace Corp volunteer.  Vested in the idea of community, the students would coordinate community meetings where human rights and other ideas were discussed.  Alongside the Batey locals students would either spend their mornings in the goat farm planting corn crops, or with the construction project building sidewalks.  Each student lived with a family where despite language barriers their host mom was their “mom,” and their host siblings were “brothers and sisters.”  The bond that was built throughout these 7 weeks is irreplaceable, and so are the ideas, thoughts, and interactions that were shared.  Empowerment was a major point of discussion over the course of my two-week visit at the GP group meetings.  The students talked and explored the rights of women, the difference in the family structures- one man having several families, young women having children, and a lack of education.  In these intimate conversations the group expressed their views on the roles of males and females, and the roles of males and females in the Batey.  Meetings like these helped the students to understand their new community, accept and integrate with their new neighbors and families and grow closer with the youth community in the Batey.  The young women and men from Global Potential served as ambassadors of change by simply being an example of the possibilities that exist outside of the closed community and building solidarity by working side-by-side. 

What is remarkable about the idea of communities like Kenscoff and Batey Ocho is how open they are to others and to sharing their homes, streets, culture, and values.  If communities like this welcome such innovative work, what types of possibilities exist for HIV/AIDS prevention?  It seems almost limitless, and the fight may exist with simply engaging one another through crossing borders and sharing what community means by participating, accepting others and being actionable.  Community does not just mean people living together in one place with similar ideals or beliefs.  The word is also based on interaction and what is left behind in the minds of the people involved.  Whether it is a new habit, a paradigm shift, or an exchange in information- all are relevant to HIV/AIDS prevention, solidifying the fact that through the exchange of ideas and interaction between different communities and individuals we can stop HIV- one community and one conversation at a time.

*Written by Regine Zamor, who was born to Haitian parents that immigrated to the United States in1968.  Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in both Westchester and Brooklyn, Regine has a diverse background that includes the suburbs, the city, Haiti and its rich culture.  This diverse background is the foundation of her work as co-producer of documentary STRANGE THINGS, program manager at Creative Connections, and as a published freelance writer.

A village in Guinea may seem worlds away.  However, given that Africa is home to 60% of the global population living with HIV/AIDS, any larger perspective on the disease must inevitably look to the continent.  And since Transdiaspora Network’s interventions employ Afro-Caribbean traditions such as storytelling and dance, this article’s sojourn could also be conceived as a return.

Friguiagbe, Guinea, September 2003:

Under a florescent floodlight, some 2,000 people—mostly residents of this town in Guinea’s coastal region—gather until the wee hours of morning for a festival of music, theater and dance.  While the traditional melodies performed here are centuries old, their lyrics are decidedly modern.

  “Use a condom!” chants one ensemble. “Or else stay celibate!”

The Ballet Wassasso from the capital city of Conakry sings the message in French and Susu, the local language, before regaling the audience with a dance of flailing limbs, an explosion of drums, and a shower of prophylactics.

As the number of Africans living with HIV/AIDS approaches 30 million, this event, the Festival of African and Guinean Folklore (FESTAFOLG), has joined an Africa-wide trend integrating AIDS education and traditional culture.  The Festival’s theme: “Stigmatization and discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS, the cultural context.”

“Folkloric culture is an important platform for relaying messages,” said Alfred Houlemou, a Guinean television journalist and the Festival’s principal organizer. Houlemou explained that the West African singer/historian, the griot, traditionally plays a social role not only as a traveling artist but also as a conveyor of practical information from village to village. 

“Will you say to the people of Friguiabe, ‘Hey, I’m going to send you an e-mail with information on preventing AIDS?’ No—the medium is wrong,” said Papa Fadiara Cissokho, who organizes a festival each year in Louga, Senegal. Even drumming, which he says replicates spoken language in many traditional African cultures, is being used to further AIDS awareness. “Rhythm is the best vector of communication in Africa,” he said.

The Paris-based International Council of Organizations of Festivals and Folklore says FESTAFOLG is one of many African festivals that have used folk culture as a platform for addressing societal concerns, ranging from ethnic conflict to sustainable development. Africa Alive!, a network of media-savvy youth organizations that have become one of the continent’s largest AIDS prevention groups, also uses music festivals to relay educational messages in eight countries. And in Cameroon, the John Hopkins University School of Public Health has collaborated with Cameroonian folk artist Paul Kengmo to produce cultural events about AIDS in rural villages known as Project Ah Ta-Ah.

In Guinea, the government’s Department of Culture provided most of the $50,000 needed to produce FESTAFOLG, which featured two-dozen ensembles from Guinea, Ivory Coast and Benin. Meanwhile, a group called PRISM sponsors 10 traveling theater troupes in Upper Guinea as part of its HIV/AIDS education program. On the day of a performance, the group organizes a Mamaya—a dance for members of a particular age group—or commissions a konden—a masked dancer—to parade around the village with drummers to attract villagers to watch interactive theater performances about HIV/AIDS.

The idea of integrating traditional West African arts and HIV/AIDS education dates to at least 1993, when Antonio Francesco, a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Diourbel, Senegal, assembled a troupe to bring health education with support from doctors to rural villages. The group toured for several months, performing with permission of village leaders and holding seminars after each show. Two months later, a health team was sent to conduct random interviews in each village, and found that villagers both remembered and understood the message.

PRISM has seen similar results. A survey conducted a year into its program found that compared to the population of Beyla—a control province in Guinea’s forest region which received no HIV/AIDS intervention—Upper Guinean men were twice as likely to use a condom.

But some HIV/AIDS workers warn that purveying health facts through the arts can be risky. “Theater and music and traditional ballets are good for attracting big audiences and presenting basic information,” said Kimberly Ross, HIV/AIDS adviser in Guinea for the U.S. Agency for International Development. “But they haven’t been effective in addressing myths and misconceptions.”

At the Friguiagbe festival, a group called Ballet Saamato performed a scene in which a comb and razor used by an unhygienic barber were said to be contaminated with the HIV virus. Such an infection “is possible,” said Mackenzie Dabo, former coordinator for the Peace Corps’ HIV/AIDS programs in Guinea, “but the chances are slim.”

Many of the festival’s scenes portraying death from AIDS included a sexually promiscuous female character, usually a prostitute. Such depictions are common in educational theater “because they’re funny and easy to represent, but they reinforce the stereotype that only prostitutes and promiscuous people can get AIDS,” Ross said.

Without consultation from knowledgeable AIDS workers, cultural performances may even reinforce misconceptions and add to the societal stigma suffered by many AIDS victims, Ross said. However, most health workers add that simply by addressing the topic of sex openly, folk performances can break through the fundamental taboo about discussing sexuality that is one of the biggest barriers to AIDS education in Guinea and elsewhere in Africa. They say traditional culture is a powerful awareness-raising tool when coupled with accurate information, thoughtful production, and discussions following each performance.

*Written by Joshua Cohen, a PhD student at Columbia University’s Art History Department, who aims to change western framings of African arts.

“Is this the medical clinic?” asks one man, to which a middle-aged woman responds, “I think so,” pointing to a picture of an AIDS ribbon visible through an open first floor window.

The building, as well as the entire city block, is occupied by Via Libre, a non-governmental organization founded in 1990, which, at the time of its creation, operated out of a cramped office and existed only through the volunteer efforts of a small group of healthcare professionals.  Since its inception, Via Libre has provided counseling and mental health services to the HIV-positive population of Lima.  Over the past 19 years, Via Libre has grown exponentially to provide free comprehensive medical services to persons living with HIV/AIDS, create a drug bank for those who cannot afford expensive antiretroviral medication, and engage in creative educational campaigns aimed at preventing the spread of HIV among Lima´s youth and other high-risk populations.  In recent years, Via Libre has created a laboratory dedicated to the development of an HIV vaccine.

When Via Libre was founded, there were no useful statistics about the number of Peruvians living with HIV, and worse, thousands were unaware that they had been infected.  As recently as September 2007, a number of population-based surveys, including surveys by the Peruvian Ministry of Health and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), reported that there were over 50,000 known cases of HIV or AIDS in Peru, with the capital region accounting for approximately 72% of these. Significantly, the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that approximately 35,000 additional Peruvians are HIV positive but unaware of their status.  According to the USAID, sexual transmission accounts for 97% of HIV/AIDS cases in Peru.

In the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic quickly became a burden on Lima´s then-collapsing healthcare system, and private citizens met the challenge of raising awareness about HIV/AIDS.

“Civil society is most responsible for HIV prevention in this country,” says Marcela Coronado, a director at Via Libre. Ms. Coronado, a psychologist who works closely with at-risk youth ages 14-18, believes that there is no organized education in Peruvian schools concerning HIV/AIDS but there is a “growing recognition that [HIV/AIDS] is major public health crisis.”

Coronado explains that Via Libre has gained inroads into at-risk populations by working with community groups, sports clubs, discotecas, and other public spaces frequented by young Peruvians.

“When we work with youth, it is imperative to work with their parents and communities, otherwise parents rightfully will be suspicious of our activities,” said Coronado.

In Coronado´s view, a major challenge is “gaining the respect and friendship of the various communities we work with…our approach differs with each target community.” While Via Libre uses its mobile unit to disseminate information to large groups of people at street fairs, it utilizes a more personal approach when working with teens. “We play games with the youth and get them to loosen up,” said Coronado.

One such game involves asking teens to write anonymously on a small piece of paper the first words that come to mind when they hear certain words, such as “sexuality,” then taping their notes onto a giant ball. The facilitator then passes around the ball, and each teen reads aloud one comment for the group to discuss. “There is a lot of laughing, but the kids are really put at ease and feel comfortable talking about serious issues.” recalls Coronado with a broad smile across her face.

Via Libre´s vision and many innovative approaches to HIV prevention have gained the organization national and international attention, including much-needed funding from the European Union and other international sources.

Many of Via Libre´s youth participants have already gone on to become peer educators and form an integral part of Peru´s fight against HIV/AIDS. As part of Via Libre´s “Communidad Saludable” (Healthy Community) campaign, which is in its second year, some youth participants now work with community leaders and health professionals to organize prevention activities in and around Lima.  Ms. Coronado reports that youth have helped organize HIV awareness fairs, created HIV-prevention brochures, and are presently working with medical clinics around Lima to create spaces where the general public can obtain HIV-prevention materials and find support groups. Ultimately, Coronado explains, “Via Libre wants to create a culture of prevention. We want to start a dialogue that will continue even after our work in a particular community is complete.”