HIV Training of Trainers

HIV/AIDS Training of Trainers
Yesterday we had our third opportunity to present in front of a real live Honduran audience. Honduras has a number of initiatives and HIV Training of Trainers (TOT) is one of them. The HIV TOT volunteer group came to our training site and spent about a day showing us the HIV/AIDS prevention program that they have developed for middle school/high school aged kids. We then had an afternoon to work within our group to prepare our own presentation. The next day we went to the local school and spent four hours with a group of 21 kids doing the program. It was a great experience and the group of kids was wonderful. They were participative, energetic, respectful and patient with our Spanish (they would even help us out when we couldn’t get a certain word out).
Dinamicas are wildly popular in Honduras. They are like ice-breaker games that we do in the US, but somehow so much better. Hondurans young and old are always up for a dinamica and seem to crack up throughout the entire thing even if we as Americans don’t think it is that funny. Some have educational or team building components, others are raunchy, others are just plain silly. We did a number of dinamicas with the kids in order to get them up and moving around and build trust.

Kati Flauty is a purely silly dinamica. The group forms a circle and holds onto the hips of the person in front of them. Then we sing a nonsense song with ridiculous body movements and by the end everybody is laughing hysterically. Globulos Blancos. In order to demonstrate how the HIV virus attacks the immune system we used the students to represent the human body, white blood cells, the HIV virus, AIDS, and other infections, like diarrhea. It is not only informative, but funny because the we use signs that say “I am diarrhea” and the students have to read them.

Here I am giving a ‘charla’ a talk about HIV. Although my Spanish still needs a lot of work, it is pretty cool that I can lecture in Spanish. I can tell that my experience teaching at HealthSpace Cleveland really is coming in handy, that and I have had very forgiving audiences. Here the students are holding cards with different steps of how to put on a condom.

This is something you would rarely see in the states… Before I can to Honduras I wondered what HIV/AIDS education would look like in a predominately Catholic country. Much to my surprise and relief Honduras is much more liberal than the US when it comes to sex-ed. Of course abstinence is encouraged as the best way to avoid transmission of STIs and unwanted pregnancy, but condoms as an alternative are strongly supported. Doing condom demonstrations with middle school/high school kids is completely acceptable.