Category: Here Bolo Peer Education
Hêré Bolo Update
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.
July 9th Hêré Bolo Update
This week, Ramatoulaye and I met and revised the curriculum, which I translated into French and corrected with Sophie’s help. Maddie sent the revised curriculum (in French) to Annie along with 12 pre and post assessment questions (also in French) a few days ago. On Friday, Maddie and Ramatoullaye had a meeting with possible peer educators, but there was some conflict because the peer educators are under the impression that they were getting paid throughout the year (something we never said) and that we needed twenty, rather than ten peer educators. After much discussion with Malick, Sophie, and Ramatoulaye, we have decided that it would be best to stick to our original plan to use ten highly motivated people to be peer educators. However, we do feel that some compensation is necessary to motivate them to attend training – so we were thinking of offering 1500CFA/per day per person rather than tee shirts to all peer educators who complete the five day program training. With this compensation will also be the firm understanding that this compensation is only for the five days of training, and that once the peer educators receive their certificate of completion, they will be working as voluntary GAIA peer educators disseminating information to groups of people at Sikoro clinic and other places to be determined.
Malick, Sophie, Victoria and I also met Mme Diarra, the warden of the women’s prison on Friday, and she would love to have us come implement Here Bolo. We are thinking of running Here Bolo there the week of either 7/23 or 7/30. Once we finalize the dates, Malick and I are going to meet with Mme Diarra again to take a tour of the prison and discuss any remaining logistic concerns.
Hêré Bolo - Hand of Hope Peer Education Project
Projet “Hêré Bolo”
This summer, the GAIA Vaccine Foundation will pilot its first HIV peer education program, “Le Main de l’Espoir,” at a clinic in Sikoro, Mali. “Le Main de l’Espoir” (which translates to “Hand of Hope” in English and “Here Bolo” in Bambera) will teach Malians about HIV prevention and treatment by using a mnemonic that is easy to remember and easy to teach. The program will be five days long, and each day will correspond to one finger of the hand to emphasize a point about HIV – hope (the thumb), identity (index finger), transmission (middle finger), marriage, fidelity and family (ring finger) and the community (both hands together). At the end of the five day program, all participants will have the necessary knowledge about HIV prevention and treatment to allow them to become peer educators and will receive a tee shirt that identifies them as HIV peer educators in the community. It will then be their responsibility to bring “Le Main de l’Espoir” to other Malians living in Bamako and Sikoro, and teach them the mnemonic so that more people can become peer educators. In this way, GAIA’s program will put HIV prevention and treatment directly in the hands of the Malian people, and give them the power to carry out their own public health intervention.