HIV/AIDS Project

7 December 2009

After Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean is the second most affected region by HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS, 2007). The face of this terrible disease is becoming increasingly young and female. The prevalence of this disease among young women and girls is due largely to gender inequalities in the home, school, community, workplace, and in sexual relations. 

“The toll on women and girls presents Africa and the world with a practical and moral challenge, which places gender at the centre of the human condition. The practice of ignoring gender analysis has turned out to be lethal.” (Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Statement made to New York UN media, 3rd July 2002).

For this reason, YMCAs in the Caribbean region place heavy emphasis on promoting gender equality when addressing HIV/AIDS. YMCA programmes also seek to provide information and education that result in ‘sexual social change’ towards responsible sexual behaviour. Youth leadership is seen as the key to spreading sexual and reproductive health education, and thus to leading the revolution in the prevention of HIV/AIDS across the region.

Sex is Ovah (Over)

In August 2008, the YMCAs of Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, set up the 'Sex is Ovah' (over) project, funded by Y Care International. The objectives of the project are to promote youth leadership in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and to promote healthy lifestyles. The project also aims to promote the YMCA’s core values of Caring, Honesty, Respect, and the responsible expression of sexuality among young people.

Key activities include HIV/AIDS education to young people, with promotion of safe sex practices, and responsible sexual decision making among young people. YMCA peer counselors and coordinators work to eradicate sexual myths, particularly around condom use, that are perpetuated among young people who are or are thinking of becoming sexually active. Information about male and female condoms is widely disseminated in communities, with the aim of arming young women and girls with the information and confidence needed to protect themselves.

In Trinidad, YMCA peer educators have worked at the University of the West Indies St. Augustine campus, where they distributed information and condoms. They also hosted a ‘Fun day’ for residents of the Cyril Ross Home, a residence in the east of Trinidad that houses children and teens living with HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Through its work, the YMCA has observed the difficulties of working with certain organised groups such as schools, because of the taboos surrounding sexual issues in Trinidad and Tobago. To break these taboos and encourage open discussion, the YMCA has also established public information booths where people can come to ask questions.

External Partnerships: Together We Can

In 1993, the Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross launched an HIV/AIDS education outreach project in collaboration with the Jamaican and America Red Cross. The Together We Can project (TWC) is based on the premise that there is a higher level of trust among young people and their peers, as opposed to older generations, and this cultivates greater openness and truth.

The TWC project recruits and trains young people aged between 13 and 19. Young people are trained in peer education activities such as role-playing. They are also trained to educate other young people on: family planning clinics, STI clinics, health centres, and pharmacies as places to get condoms; positive attitudes to people living with HIV and AIDS; and how HIV/AIDS is transmitted and prevented.

This project’s aims and approach closely overlap with the YMCA’s Sex is Ovah project. The YMCA is therefore collaborating directly with the Red Cross, and jointly implementing certain activities such as the training of peer educators.

Learn More!

The YMCA has created an interactive forum for peer educators to debate and share experiences on HIV/AIDS related issues, using Facebook. To learn more, search ‘Sex is Ovah – The Movement’ on Facebook.

This article first appeared in YMCA World, September 2009, the magazine of the World Alliance of YMCAs.