North PEPFAR Workshop

PEPFAR, President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, is a program started by Bush. As health volunteers, we have access to some of its funds for a workshop in our second year. The 11 volunteers in the northern region of Nicaragua all organized our workshop for last week in Esteli. Based on our experience in the last year, we decided our population would be health workers; we thought they could use a refresher on the various tenants of working with HIV. Our taller covered various topics related to HIV such as transmission, microbiology, the HIV rapid test, statistics, MARPS(most at risk populations: men who have sex with men, people who are transgender, sex workers, migrant workers, military) etc. Each of us organized a different session, inviting Nicaraguans to participate if we could.

My friends Robyn and Cassie and I organized two sessions on Stigma and Discrimination. In our first session, they gave a powerpoint about what stigma and discrimination mean and how they affect HIV transmission and treatment. I talked about the law in Nicaragua that protects rights pertaining to people with HIV.  Afterward, an HIV positive woman spoke about her experience.

Here I am talking about Law 238, which protects rights pertaining to HIV

 In our second session, we started with a panel of 5 people who work in HIV education or treatment: 2 members of a women’s organization that work in HIV education and prevention, one nurse(wearing white) who does lots of HIV tests, treatment, and counseling, and 2 members of an organization for people who are HIV positive. As we asked various questions, they talked about struggles in working with HIV, what are some of the things lacking in education right now, how to work with different populations, etc. Afterward, we broke everyone into groups and they reviewed a case study where someone was stigmatized or discriminated for his/her HIV status. I’m really happy with how our session went- it was a dynamic session with not just people standing in front and talking, and I think it generated some great thought on HIV education. The evaluations from the workshop had a lot of praise for our session, which was really rewarding to hear.

Cassie introducing our panel, two women from a women's org that works in HIV education and prevention, an HIV + speaker from an org ASONVIHSIDA, a nurse from Esteli, and another HIV+ speaker, who spoke in our first session too

I'm supervising a discussion on the first case study we distributed. I'm on the far right, if you don't recognize me.

In addition to this session, I also co-led the introduction and organized a little play for the first night’s entertainment. A youth group from Esteli run by a PCV performed a skit concerning stigma and confidentiality, so it was a great lead in to the second day’s topics.

Co-planner Cass and I on the left with our actors on the right

From this workshop, I’m really hoping to use some of the strategies and information I learned to work with groups of men. I already included some of the stats, microbio, and MARP information in my classes at the high school this week. World AIDS Day is Dec 1, so hopefully I’ll get some good momentum going for then!

All the participants and PCVs. I'm the third set of eyes, top row from the left.