Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

AIDS awareness: UNICEF project focuses on youth

Anasuya Menon

Aims at training them as peer educators

COIMBATORE: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has initiated a project in the villages of many districts of Tamil Nadu to encourage community - level participation in the campaign for spreading awareness on HIV/AIDS.

The peer education project is aimed at young people between the age group of 12 and 20.

Launched a few months ago in nine districts, the project aims at training youngsters from the village as peer educators. Each village will have four peer educators - two men and two women.

"Most of the villages have a large number of youth who are school dropouts and unemployed. This group is often the most vulnerable to contracting HIV," says Thomas George, Communication Officer of UNICEF.

Not just the youth are selected as peer educators, but every youngster in the village will be given training as part of this programme, he says. Non-Government Organisations (NGO) and volunteers of the Nehru Yuva Kendra will give the training.

Kanyakumari, Nagapattinam, Madurai, Theni, Karur, Tirunelveli, Thanjavur, Krishnagiri and Villupuram are the districts in which the programme is implemented.

The song and drama division of the Government of India also does its part by spreading the message of prevention through short skits and songs.

In all these districts put together, 52,000 young people have been trained and by December 2006, the figure is likely to go up to one lakh, says Mr. George. Nearly 2,000 peer educators have been trained till date.

The technical and financial support for the project has been given by the UNICEF.

While the basic thrust will be on the need for prevention and its ways, the volunteers will also give training in life skills. Training them to say `no' to peer pressure is the main objective of the programme, he says.

Before launching the programme, an advocacy campaign was held in most of the villages with community leaders and elders in order to garner support for the initiative.

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