The 3 day HIV/AIDS workshop held on the 25th to 27th February 2002 was at the instance of aa number of a series of training courses planned to downstream the use of "Journey of Hope", a behaviour change communication tool and technique developed and pre-tested by John Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs of the USA and now being adopted in the Ghana National Stop AIDS Love Life Campaign. YAFOW happens to be one of the few organisations within a local network contracted to execute the downstreaming while in my capacity as a Master Trainer, I facilitated during the training ofparticipants as trainer of trainers including the just ended one at a venue 60km west of Cape Coast where my ooffice is.

The Journey of Hope is a powerful tool that employs attractive symbols to represent a number of real life situations:
(i) Crocodiles depicting HIV infection and other STDs in a flood of rising waters.
(ii) Boats and Bridges depicting support methods provided people to escape the dangers in the flood waters viz. Abstinence(A), Being faithful(B), Condom use (C) and delay in first sexual intercourse(D)
(iii) Future Islands representing the individual's gaols in life.

Readers would note that the magnituge of devastation HIV/AIDS has inflicted on the mass of we Sub-Saharan Africans as compared to that of 2001 September 11th bombing on the United States is beyond compare. The potential of the disease in wiping out a millions of my compatriots in countries located in this West african sub-region within the shortest possible time can not be under estimated.This require conscious efforts at both governmental and non-governmental levels to be made in order to stem the rising tide in the HIV infection of my peoples.In line with the response to this national disaster our training programs were fashion out to strengthen the technical capacities of personnel of other civil society groups including community based organisations (CBOs) to apply this new behavioural change communication tool in their future HIV campaign activities. The tool has proved to be very helpful in generating interest of people to translate their awareness of HIV/AIDS to real life choices that are compartible with their culture and life styles. so that they can stay protected from HIV infection and and healthy always.

During the 3 day event we were able to turn out 40 participants drawn from selected institutions, NGOs and CBOs in the area of HIV/AIDS as trainer of trainers who were commissioned to go and train mostly peer educators further downstream. Participants were taken through topics including the basic facts about HIV/AIDS; contents of the Journey of Hope(JOH) tools and techniques; training in the correct demonstration of the proper wearing of both male and female condoms and field experiences.

By the end of the training workshop,as TOTs, participants were able to increase their knowledge in the basic facts about HIV/AIDS and other STIs. They were also able to explain the key concepts of JOH and how they apply in practice and correctly demonstrated the proper wearing of the condoms among other landmarks of the workshop.

Five more of similar workshops would be organised in 5 more regional towns before the end of April 2002.

Report by: Christian Bansah Afenyo

For : TakingItGlobal.org