by Lesedi Mpuchane

04 August 2009

Gaborone, Botswana: I started offering my services as a UNV volunteer in 2006. I work in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana, which has many opportunities and challenges.

The Community Capacity Enhancement Process (CCEP) is a model geared towards fighting HIV/AIDS through community conversations. At its heart is the belief that the community has a vast amount of knowledge and the capability to identify problems that affect them.

The community can also act to solve such problems and work on solutions. It just needs facilitators who can tap into their knowledge so it can be utilized by the people, as a community.

We use community facilitator volunteers to mobilize and facilitate these conversations, be it at clinics, drinking spots, open areas, kgotlas (traditional community meetings), community halls and workplaces.

With these conversations we have seen the community develop an interest in testing for HIV/AIDS. People are beginning to trust and use Government programmes like Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT).

We have seen a rise in the formation and membership of support groups. The stigma is also reducing because people are now openly talking about HIV/AIDS issues. We have also seen communities developing an interest in psychosocial support of one another.

African Independent Churches have also been the volunteers’ target group in bringing about behaviour change.

We had a Christmas session held at old Naledi for the Holy Cross Hospice and the Matlo Go sha Mabapi clientele (an HIV/AIDS support group). We had four big suitcases full of clothes and shoes, and both kids and adults got presents. This was one of the activities that bring fulfilment to the volunteer, just as it brings hope to the lives of the orphans and vulnerable children.

I work with community volunteers; the volunteers have put the Bosele people they work with into groups of similar interest, so as to have different conversations. They include specific groups for youth, men, employees, students, teenagers, women and others.

I would like to share my experience of having a conversation with teenagers aged 13 to 15. A group which is assumed to be in a developmental stage towards sex, a group that is picking information from different sources and might have misconceptions. A group that is aware of HIV/AIDS issues and might be affected by it at school and at home.

This is a group that is likely to have issues, but may not know who to ask out of fear of being misunderstood.

Conversations are facilitated through Setswana as a medium of communication, because the volunteers and the teenagers are comfortable with the language. In facilitating conversations, we use probing questions. From the conversations we can note that teenagers claim to get information from television, newspaper, radio, books, home and clinic.

The funny part was when the boys said: “HIV/AIDS affects people at the ages of 15 to 45 years because those below that age do not have sperm, so they cannot get HIV/AIDS.” They also said HIV/AIDS is affecting girls that are more beautiful than the ugly ones: reasons being that “they are propositioned more”, “they are likely to be raped”, and “they engage in sex at an earlier age”.

The above statements are referred to as ‘myths’ in the Community Capacity Enhancement Process; this is when the UNV volunteer or the facilitator comes in to get the believers of these myths to know the facts.

The teenagers now know the facts: we have had different conversations with the group and others as well.

The experience of facilitating these conversations is fun, considering what you would hear, as people say their perspectives. And you learn in the process.

Here is what the kids give as advice to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS;  No sex before marriage, stop expecting bribes, stop polygamy, stop prostitution, don’t have sex because condoms cannot fit you properly, do not have sex because we are small, avoid exposing clothes.

Hey, everyone has knowledge: we can always tap into some for bringing change in our communities!