On Thursday, December 01, 2016, we celebrated World AIDS Day at the Kalebuka Football for Hope Center. The goal was to raise awareness about the disease and how to fight against its spread. The day was comprised of three activities to educate young people in attendance about HIV/AIDS.
On the field, we had 28 young people (girls and boys) who participated actively in the games. Malaika’s eldest students (30 girls in Grade 6) were also invited, as well as all the youth at the Center.
During our discussions, we found that some young people who were recently enrolled at the Community Center did not have an accurate knowledge of HIV, its mode of transmission or the means of protection.
We used the curriculum from our partner Coaches Across Continents, which included these games:
1. CAN ADEBAYOR SEE HIV? The coach asks players to close their eyes and have one player take a small stone, which represents HIV. When the coach asks the players to open their eyes and guess who has the piece of stone, it proved that it was difficult to find. The message was that you can’t look at someone and see who is HIV-positive and who isn’t. It is important that you and your partner are tested.
2. ADEBAYOR USES A CONDOM TAG: In this game, young people were shown how HIV can spread rapidly in a community that ignores modes of transmission. We asked the attendees to come up with good choices in order to limit the spread. We then talked about using a condom and its benefits.
3. ADEBAYOR HANDS AGAINST HIV: In this game, the player who is in the middle of the group must make a good choice to protect himself against a ball (the symbol of HIV in the game); the more choices you make, the more you are protected against the virus.
The young people enjoyed the games, which they said “will allow us to remember knowledge about HIV because they were practical.”
