ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

THE “HIV/AIDS” PHENOMENON LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGEPERCEPTIONS AND ATITUDES 1RODICA ŢUGUIA. The actual context of AIDS. The knowledge of the priests (participants atthe focus groups) 2 about the history of the disease and ways to preventsources of misinformation1 Results of a study proposed by the staff of the project Consolidation of the communityinitiatives in Romania. The project called Consolidation of the community initiatives in Romania isimplemented mainly by two parteners, the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the InternationalOrthodox Christian Chartity (IOCC). To these partners also the Ministry of Education and Researchwas added(as a partner institution) as well as two other organisations namely “John Snow Researchand Training Institute” and “The Horisons Foundation” (“subcontracting structures”). The mainfinancer of the project is the United States for International Developement (USAID). Thecoordinating team of the project is made of Mark Ohanian regional director of IOCC for EasternEurope and Caucaz; Will Clowney, program coordinator for IOCC Romania; Sophia Brewer, projectmanager; Cosmin Grigorescu project coordinator; Anemarie Gasser, coordinator of comunityactivities.The general objective of the project is to develop certain positive atitudes among thepersonell of the Romanian Orthodox Church (priests, religion teachers, suppliers of social andcultural services, partish people), thru education and instruction so that these would become factorsof social transformations and to determin certain “proactive” reactions at the parochial comunity levelconcerrning preventing the iminent social problems and aproaching the existing ones among whichespecially the HIV infection stigmatisation and marginalisation which they provoke as well as thefamily violence. If the study published in the last number of „AO” magasine we refeared at theproblem of the family violence, in the present article we will emphasise a few characteristics of the“AIDS” phenomenon”.2 The managerial team wanted to find out, before the actual implementation of theproject, information concerning the current attitudes, the level of knowledge about family violenceand HIV generally, but mostly in the local communities. Also, to find out the type of supportwhich ROC, in partnership with IOCC, could give to the priests. Also beneficial is acquiringknowledge about their expectations and, implicitly, their suggestions on how preventative activityfor these two serious social problems in the community could be most effective. In order tostructurally pick these quality data, the focus group was used as a method of research anddeveloped based on an interview guide. Besides emphasizing certain „configurations” of theinformation about HIV and family violence, which the priests know about, we wanted to learnabout their sources of information by which they reached their opinions; of their own mentalities;and of the community “pastored”. Also referring to the need to “absorb” practically the ideas(about the two plagues) and the needs of these socio demographic categories. The selection of thefocus group as an investigation method is aimed to compare the transformations appearing inattitudes and knowledge with the progress in applying the project with an emphasis on them.If preventing certain social and medical problems, such as HIV and family violence, islooked upon as fields in which only professionals will be involved, experience coming from othercountries shows how the religious communities can have a very important contribution in creatinga healthy and protective framework for its members and victims of the two plagues. This is why inARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p. 243–262