YUWA, a youth led nonprofit organization, and MTV Staying Alive Foundation are taking matters into their own hands to spread awareness about the issue.[break]
YUWA has been working on the areas of HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), environment, economic initiation and glocal information access since 2009 and now are going to be taking their HIV/AIDS and SRHR project to the different parts of the country and generating a national awareness on these issues through this partnership from June 22 to 28.
Medha Sharma, the Program Coordinator of YUWA informs, “We had been working on issues of HIV/AIDS in the Valley before and always had an urge to take it nationwide, but we lacked the adequate finance.
Then, there was a global call from MTV Staying Alive Foundation which stated that they would provide grant to 12 youth led organizations from around the world whose proposals they found genuinely convincing. We sent ours which consisted of three pillars we wanted to work on for a grant of $10,750.”
The triads that they will be working on from the fund are Red Ribbon Caravan, Reaching out Young Minds and Audio/video in local languages.
Sharma explained how competitive it was as 1,600 organizations sent their applications out of which 300 were selected, 25 interviewed and 12 were given the grants.
“We had a hope of making it because of our past success and the strong proposal we had submitted, but weren’t sure as there were a plethora of other organizations opting for it. When it was decided that we would also get the grant, all of us were euphoric as we could fulfill our farfetched dreams.The YUWA team is proud to be a part of the prestigious brand,” added she.
For the “Red Ribbon Caravan”, they will travel to nine districts around the country in a bus designed attractively with HIV and AIDS related banners, slogans and posters, so as to pertain the name.
Traditional musical instrument sarangi will also be played by traditional youth musicians as traditional singers who are called gaines, who will sing about HIV and AIDS, substance abuse, harm reduction, stigma and discrimination.
The YUWA team is also collaborating with different schools to screen several documentaries, conduct quizzes, puppet shows in various schools of the Valley and they’ll also set up a mobile info cabin where the queries of people on HIV and AIDS will be answered.
“Our goal is to educate the children on the issues of HIV and AIDS and we believe that children can retain more information when things are taught practically rather than using the usual classroom setting” informs Rukh Gurung, the president of YUWA.
The second pillar “Reaching out Young Minds” is a capacity strengthening program for young key affected population (YKAF) like young drug users, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender infections, young sex workers, potential migrant workers and other youths.
The one day workshop will provide life skill training on capacity strengthening, opening up the issue of HIV to the youngsters, sharing some success stories of those victims, and also exploring potentials for the economic sustainability of those victims.
For the third pillar of the project “Audio/video in local language”, HIV, AIDS and stigma minimization will be developed in five different languages, namely Tamu, Newari, Maithali, Doteli and Tamang, and disseminated widely through mainstream and alternate media. Also small mobile formats will be developed that will be transferred from mobile to mobile to reach to a large mass of young people quickly.
“As Nepal is a multiethnic and multilingual country, young people are not getting an access to information because they cannot understand Nepali or English language in which all the materials have been developed. So, we have translated it to other dialects to guarantee their right to information,” shares Medha.
Stressing on the fact that almost every youngster own mobile phones she highlighted that the easy to use of it to transfer ‘non copyright videos’ can reach to large mass of young people quickly which supports their cause.
“We have done Red Ribbon Caravan in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur in the past and it was a huge success. There were an overwhelming number of people who came and inquired about HIV/AIDS. Dwelling at the success of the past, I have high expectations from this nationwide trip and I believe we will achieve our aim of making a difference in many lives throughout the nation.” adds she.
The first step to awareness is talking about it and YUWA and the MTV Staying Alive Foundation aim at just that.
A cure for the global epidemic has not been discovered yet, but sharing correct information about it will definitely help prevent the rise in the number of infection.
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