Aids Education with World Vision

I am a strong proponent of not “reinventing the wheel” and not wanting to waste my time trying to figure out what would work and what wouldn’t. Therefore, I initiated a search for a good and impactful Aids Education program that had be tried and tested in Africa already. World Vision has a program call Channels of Hope that puts on workshops for Pastors about the AIDS pandemic and helps them strategize on how their church can personally be involved; whether it is counseling people with HIV in their churches, caring for the sick in their communities, or educating youth and church members about transmission and prevention. After being in Africa for just a short time you begin to quickly recognize how influential pastors are as a whole on the continent. They wield immense amounts of influence over the people that are in their congregations, even when it comes to their families health decisions. If a Pastor says to go to the doctor, they go, if he says just pray about it, they do. By educating Pastors, you are able to multiply the impact of that education, since each Pastor can represent anywhere from 200 to 1000 people. It is even further multiplied if you can mobilize an entire congregation to make strategies to reach their surrounding community. You can see the rippling affect such a strategy can have by simply targeting community leaders; which in this case is most of the Pastors anyway.

I was there representing Uganda, but as the first American to be trained in the program, my true nationality was often mentioned. I also was only one of two people who did NOT work directly for World Vision. It was a divine opportunity (God-ordained) to take part of such an eye-opening experience and gain access to such a great program and toolkit that is often reserved for those employed by World Vision. Present in the 8 day training were people from the African countries of Mozambique, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Lesotho. And from the Eastern Europe countries of Georgia and Albania as well as the Latin American country of El Salvador. El Salvador, interestingly enough, I learned uses the US Dollar for their currency, in other words, they have no national currency! Through the years I have begun collecting a currency bill from each country I attend, but if I ever go to El Salvador, I’ll just have to keep one of our very own greenbacks! And, just as diverse as the countries, were the languages spoken. The workshop was in English, but two translators were present, one translated into Spanish and the other into Lesotho. Let me give a more vivid picture of how diverse of cultures were present in this eight day training. The trainer wanted to use riding a bike as an analogy for a particular session, however when she asked the group how many knew how to ride a bike, ONLY HALF raised their hands. How many people in the United States have never learned how to ride a bike? Maybe I assume to much, that such a practice is a staple for all children living in the United States, and I would be shocked to find out how many truly miss that lesson growing up in the US, nevertheless, I am quite certain that it would NOT be 50%!!

Again, World Vision’s Channels of Hope will be a great tool for incorporating AIDS Education into the Hope Village outreach programs. It is a strategy that I never anticipated before arriving to Uganda, but I believe will be even more impacting then any other idea. On my return to Kampala, we will be able to incorporate these three-day training sessions into the Bible College on Hope Village Property and another Bible College on Bussi Island, and we hope to also host a workshop for at least 50 Pastors in June on this topic of AIDS Education and how churches can be mobilized to reach this community.