Anchoring Awareness in the Community - Handicap International

FESTIVE EVENTS TO CONVEY THE MESSAGES
Festive events were regularly organized
during the project at all intervention sites. Their
contents were adapted to the local cultural
context, but in all cases, the principle was the
same: attract an audience with festive shows,
musical concerts or circuses and include HIV/
AIDS awareness activities in these spectacles
using skits, quizzes or personal testimony.
When possible, a mobile VCT (Voluntary
Counseling and Testing) center was set up
near the show.
Involve health authorities
for greater impact
Before each public event, health authorities
were notified of the date and place and asked
to send a representative to give the opening
speech for the event. In addition, when a
mobile VCT center was planned for, authorities
provided a counselor and a laboratory
technician to ensure testing.
Announce to attract
To ensure a large audience, festive events were
announced beforehand. This announcement
was made by community leaders from the
project advisory committee in their respective
areas of influence. In parallel, on the day of
the event, professional announcers passed
through the streets to advertise the coming
event. Finally, a banner announcing the event
was hung at the place where the event was to
take place.
Use the know-how of existing associations
for animating the event
For public events, other local associations
with specific know-how provided valuable
assistance, especially for creating and
presenting skits on the HIV/AIDS topic or for
musical animation.
Mix modernity and tradition
to raise awareness
In the Afar region of Ethiopia, festive events rely
on an important cultural specificity, “kasso”.
This is traditional music featuring respected
elders who sing about different subjects.
People play close attention to messages
transmitted in this way. During concerts,
modern music for dancing alternates with
calm periods and attentive listening to kasso
singers, who conveyed awareness messages
in their songs.
Adapt awareness events to the audience
Festive awareness events were adapted to
the context of each region, as well as within
a given country. At Dire Dawa (Ethiopia),
festive events included testimony of persons
living with the virus, quizzes and mobile VCT
centers, whereas in the Afar region (Ethiopia),
only traditional kasso music was used to
transmit awareness messages.
In Somaliland, public events did not include
testimony by PLWHIV and, above all,
condoms were not mentioned, since the
authorities preferred to inform about the
disease only. According to these authorities,
denial is so strong that the population risked
© Julie de Lamarzelle pour Handicap International
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