Health Promoters Project

The project provides workshops for students in an effort to enable them to develop health promotion campaigns on their campuses and in local communities. The trained students are referred to as "health promoters" and are chosen from nine historically disadvantaged campuses that are sites for the project. The goal is to capacitate young people living with HIV to establish support groups on HEI campuses and to provide peer education with special reference to issues of gender, positive living, and voluntary counselling and testing (VCT).

The health promoters are required to:

• Form support groups for those infected and affected by AIDS
• Sustain the new support groups using DramAide methodologies
• Promote the concept of VCT
• Engage in face-to-face dialogue with students to address issues of stigma and promote positive living
• Enhance or add value to existing peer education and HIV/AIDS projects on campuses.

Two training workshops were provided for the health promoters in 2002. These sessions explored information aspects about HIV/AIDS as well as potential effective communication strategies for peer education.

Three follow-up training and support workshops were conducted on each campus. The aims of these workshops were to provide back-up for the health promoters and additional information and skills in relation to VCT, positive living, and issues of gender and advocacy.

The project has produced a video and accompanying facilitator's guide. Institutions with a campus radio station have promoted the project, and a play was created and performed at the Grahamstown Arts festival.

Health, HIV/AIDS, Youth, Gender.

Project organisers claim that "Health promoters were able to develop effective communication strategies (workshops, talks, dramas and face-to-face dialogue) to promote voluntary counselling and testing, positive living, advocacy and develop support groups on their own campuses. They were received and treated well on all campuses, and face-to-face communication with students was the most prevalent activity of the project. An increased number of students have undergone voluntary counselling and testing after workshops."

DramAide is a collaboration between the Universities of Natal and Zululand.