Paraguay: A Peace Corps Adventure: First Project success!

HIV/AIDS Taller:

So I’ve finally completed my first ever, real life project. Last Monday, my two youth (Leti and Sandra) and I taught our HIV/AIDS taller. A taller (pronounced tayer) is basically an extended class about a certain topic, ours was approximately 2.5 hours. As you all know, we went to a Peace Corps-run taller in early August and we have to do some kind of community project with the new information that we learned about for the follow up taller in October. My youth are super guapa and wanted to do a complete mini-taller, I was so proud of them when they suggested it!

It took a ton of planning, more than I actually realized to be honest. We had to figure out where we were going to hold it, who we would invite, when we were going to do it, what day…etc. The girls talked to their directora at the high school and got permission to use one of the classrooms during the afternoon session of school. We picked our day, and then we had to start inviting people to come. This was always a source of anxiety for me because it would mean that I would have to go from class to class chatting about what this taller was about. If you know me, you know that I don’t really love speaking in front of people, let alone tons of teenagers that I don’t know who all speak Spanish. It ended up being fine, but I was terrified every single time haha. It was also nerve wracking because we were never sure who was actually going to show up, if anyone at all! We invited all classrooms that had students aged 14-19, at all three high schools in town. That is A LOT of kids, but clearly not everyone was going to come…we weren’t even sure if one person would show up… We also decided to announce an invitation on the radio, the Friday beforehand, in order to make community members aware who could then encourage a teen to come. It was actually pretty cool, and I hope to use the radio as a means to advertise my future projects as well.

So we invited everyone, made all of our materials (charla papers, diagrams, schedules, presentations, etc.), then decided we also wanted to make a snack for all of our participants. Cupcakes are clearly a necessity, and I think they were certainly a selling point. Leti and Sandra also decided to ask their school’s cantina worker to make some small little snack foods as well, things like mini empanadas, pizza bites, tiny triangle sandwiches…those kinds of things. Yum.

So Monday morning arrives and I’m just freaking out because I need to continue practicing my sections and my brain is just a mess. It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, because clearly I know this info like the back of my hand…I’ve studied it about a 100 times throughout my schooling, but I just simply don’t know HIV vocabulary in Spanish. I study and study and practice my parts and finally feel ready. So I head over to Leti’s house and we grab all of our materials and head to the school. My heart is racing because of the nerves but I’m trying to keep my cool. We get to the room and start setting up and we ended up having the perfect amount of prep time. Then kids start showing up. I was excited, but also terrified. I had such mixed emotions. I obviously wanted people to show up because we had put so much work into it, but I also just wanted to go home and not have to face the embarrassment of stumbling through the activities.

The taller was supposed to start at 5. This obviously did not happen. At around 5:15 we only had about 8 kids, so Leti had the idea of going back to the classrooms that were having their afternoon session to re-remind them of the taller’s existence. We go to the 9^th grade class and every single student wants to come. Now we have approximately 30 students, which is WAY more than I anticipated. We started at about 5:30, and had to cut some things out because of time. Our schedule was as follows:

Introduction-basically just thanking them all for coming, blah blah

Noviazgo Saludable- this means healthy relationships. They LOVED this. I didn’t really think it would be that big of a hit, but we ended up spending a lot more time on this than planned. We had each student fill out a list of the things that their Ideal partner would have (physically, emotionally, personality-wise, etc) and also the things they didn’t want. Then we collected each paper (it was anonymous) and passed them back out randomly. They then had to get into groups and discuss similarities and differences and talked about what this meant. It was great.

I.T.S.- this means STDs. We did an activity to begin called “the dance”. Each person is given a blank piece of paper (the invitation to a party), and they have to choose a symbol from the wall (there was a star, crescent moon, square, circle, triangle, and a heart). Then we would play music and everyone would have to dance around and each time you danced with someone, you would write their chosen symbol on your card. Once we were done, we revealed what each symbol meant (star-syphilis, crescent moon- gonorrhea, square-herpes, triangle-chlamydia, heart-HIV and the circle was healthy person) and then asked who had “danced” with each type of symbol... it was good little introduction to the section. Then we talked about each of the STDs and now to prevent and treat them.

HIV/AIDS- this was the main section obviously. We did an overview about what HIV/AIDS stands for, then we talked about how it’s transmitted and how it is NOT transmitted, risky behaviors, prevention, the stages of HIV and what happens to a person who has HIV/AIDS, and finally treatment and tests to find out if someone is HIV positive. We then did a little activity about risky behavior. There were approximately 20 little slips of paper that had a behavior one it and then there was a large thermometer with 3 sections on it “Major risk”, “minor risk” and “no risk”. An example of each would be “sharing needles during drug use”-obviously major risk, “having sex with a condom”-minor risk, and “abstinence” or “mosquito bites”-no risk.

Stigma and Discrimination- this was our last section of information. We started out with an activity were they formed 2 groups. Each group needed to stand next to each other, as close as possible with their hands behind their backs. We gave the first person of each group an orange with the word HIV on it. When we told them to start, they had to pass the orange to each other without letting the other team know who had it. When we told them to stop, the other team would have to choose who they thought had the orange in their hands. They (as expected) guessed wrong every time. This was to signify that you can’t tell who has HIV just by looking at them. Then we went on to define stigma and discrimination and the various types there are.

Learning Check: this was the last activity of the taller. We had condoms blown up like balloons with a piece of paper inside that had a review question. They split into three groups and lined up. The “balloons” were spread around in the middle of the room and on the other side were 3 chairs. They had to race to grab a “balloon” and run to their chair and sit on the balloon to pop it, the first person got the answer their question first (without the help of their group). This was a great way to gauge what info really stuck with them and what info needs to be worked on, plus it was really fun.

Overall, I think it was really successful and I think we’ll probably continue doing charlas about HIV/AIDS in the other colegios. The technical school was really interested in having their own set of charlas for each class so that seems very promising.

So even though the entire process was scary and daunting, and even though I definitely stumbled during my sections of the taller, I’m SO happy that I had a successful event as my first project. YAY!!!

oh and PS-they all really loved the cupcakes! :)