This week, Here Bolo kicked off its first week of peer education training. Due to the overwhelming interest in the program, the program was expanded to include 20 peer educators – 13 men and seven women, rather than ten. Training took place over three days from Tuesday to Thursday, and was conducted by Dr. Malick Kone, Ramatoulaye, and Maddie DiLorenzo. Maddie administered a pre-assessment survey on Tuesday and a post-assessment evaluation on Thursday in order to assess the peer educators’ knowledge of HIV prevention and treatment. While Maddie has yet to fully analyze the data, she has briefly scanned all of the surveys, and found that the majority of the participants have a pretty good basic knowledge of HIV prevention and treatment both before and after training. However, Maddie did notice that pre-training, participants still held some common misconceptions about HIV – such that one could tell if a person was HIV-positive by looking at them or that one could catch HIV by kissing someone. The sessions were also characterized by a great deal of debate as men described their reluctance to wear condoms and women described their reluctance to breastfeed despite their knowledge of the benefits of these practices. Therefore, the peer educators’ mission will be to not only educate others, but to address the gap between HIV knowledge and preventive practices in Sikoro.
Perhaps the best part of the program has been the peer educators’ enthusiasm for their work – each day’s session ran at least 45 minutes over time as the peer educators asked questions and began practicing for the upcoming Balonie de l’Espoir, which will take place in Sikoro on Saturday, July 29. The Balonie is a celebration dedicated to educating the Sikoro public about HIV prevention and treatment practices, and will feature all peer educators performing skits that illustrate the five points of the Here Bolo program: hope, identity, transmission, marriage and family, and community. Malick, Ramatoulaye and Maddie will dedicate the next two weeks to planning this event. Beginning on August 1, Malick, Ramatoulaye and Maddie will begin tracking each peer educator’s progress as they begin to educate others in various parts of Sikoro.
Malick, Ramatoulaye, and Maddie will also be collaborating with Mme Diarra Assetou Koite to implement Here Bolo at the Bolle Women’s Correctional Facility in Bamako either the week of July 23 or July 30. Maddie will then write up an evaluation of this project for the Infectious Disease in Corrections Report.
Maddie Di Lorenzo
Brown University ’08