AIDS prevention in the city district of Laulane, Mozambique, 170
euros
Since 1994 the
organisation Centro de Encontro has been organising activities for
inner city street children in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. A
huge added bonus with all these activities is that large groups of
children are approachable for the organisations AIDS volunteers who
give information on AIDS, hand out flyers and condoms.
Since 1994 the organisation Centro de
Encontro has been organising activities for inner city street
children in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. A huge added bonus
with all these activities is that large groups of children are
approachable for the organisations AIDS volunteers who give
information on AIDS, hand out flyers and condoms.
The most important projects of Centro de Encontro are the Escuola de
Rua (the street school), Escuola de Futebol ‘Leões de Laulane
(the soccer club) and the grupo de Rap “Genios Fidalgos” (the
rap group which had a surprising number 1 hit in Mozambique). These
projects have already been running succesfully for several years and
provide a more stable and safe environment for street children in
Maputo. At school, and at the soccer games, at the festivities
during a special streetchildrens-day and during rap concerts of
their very own rap group, AIDS volunteers can more easily approach
large groups of children to hand out flyers, and condoms, but even
better, can talk with these children about AIDS and STD’s .
In 2007 there were 6 instead of 4 AIDS activists because 2 girls
joined the group educated by Edson. Edson is a younger brother of
Bethino, the first leader of the AIDS activists in the project in
1998. Bethino is one of the success stories of this project. He
started out as one of the first students at the street children’s
school in the district of Laulane in 1995 and now he is a police
officer in training. It is a trend seen more then once in this
project. In the junior teams at the soccer school we see a lot of
younger brothers of first generation soccer school kids and Ito, the
new member of the rap group is also a younger brother of Osvaldo,
one of the leaders of the group.
AIDS prevention project
It turns out that today’s youth in Maputo knows enough about AIDS;
however there are a number of problems still. First of all,
knowledge about AIDS does not necessarily mean an adjustment in
behaviour. The message should therefore not only be conveyed through
information meetings but more so with one-on-one conversations.
Secondly, AIDS may be well known, but the dangers of STD’s are
still much less known and there is little to no information material
available on this subject.
The girls usually want to use a condom but the boys don’t.
Therefore it is extremely important to teach these girls to stand up
for themselves. Another problem is that some children are difficult
to reach. For instance children that live in the outskirts of town
like sheep boys and street vendors who left school at the age of 12
and are simply not easy to get in touch with. And lastly there is a
problem with written materials. Most of these kids can’t read so
it seems more sensible to make flyers without text and instead make
a picture story with a clear and simple message.
Another problem is the way conflicting messages are conveyed to the
people. Centro de Encontro is a progressive project so there is an
open dialogue about the use of condoms and birthcontrol. The
churches on the other hand are against the use of condoms and there
are also magicians and witchdoctors who claim that AIDS can be cured
by drinking fruit juices.
Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done and next year the
organisation Centro de Encontro wants to have even more AIDS
volunteers working in the field. Adding more activists to the
program does not involve extra costs because the training of these
AIDS activists is done by the Red Cross Mozambique. Yet extra money
is needed for the extra materials.
For new flyers with pictures/cartoon-like stories and 1200 packages
of condoms for free hand outs the centre needs 170 Euro.
Total € 170,--
adopted
by the
general
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