Team of Experts will be in Kenya for Three Weeks, Beginning Nov. 27

A small group of DePaul faculty and staff huddle around a conference table in Chicago for a final critique of a colorful brochure emblazoned with the title: “Love Life, Talk and Live!” In a short while that same pamphlet will be read by a fifth-grade student in a classroom 8,000 miles away in Kenya. The brochure will offer a starting point for discussions among students and teachers on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

The materials, which include posters and curriculum guides, were facilitated by a team headed by DePaul psychology Professor Gary Harper as classroom aids for Catholic school teachers in Kenya. Harper, working with psychology department research staff member Leah Neubauer and communication Associate Professor Lexa Murphy, helped to develop the materials in response to Kenyan grade school educators’ need for student HIV/AIDS intervention materials that focus on building communication skills.

Teachers in the East African nation of 31 million people face the critical task of arming school children with the knowledge needed to combat the pandemic of HIV and AIDS. Although UNAIDS data show that the country’s adult prevalence of HIV has declined in recent years, the prevalence remains as high as 13 percent among certain populations. The majority of new cases of HIV in Kenya are among youth and young adults, especially young women 15 to 24 years of age and young men under the age of 30.

According to Harper, one of the biggest obstacles to combatting the spread of HIV and AIDS throughout Africa is the failure of people to talk and share information. “AIDS and HIV are around people in Kenya 24 hours a day, yet there is a silence in talking about it.”

Harper, who has done HIV-related research, community based interventions and policy work for the past 21 years and has helped to establish programs in 15 communities across the United States, has partnered with members of the Kenya Episcopal Conference-Catholic Secretariat’s office (KEC-CS) to find and develop methods to foster dialogue about health and sexuality in the schools.

The programs and tactics that have been developed are aimed at school children 10 to 14 years old in grades fifth through eight. With more than 1.3 million children in Kenya believed to be infected with HIV, Harper said earlier intervention is crucial and a new approach to addressing the issue seems to be helping.

“Educating children about HIV and AIDS this young in Catholic schools is radical,” said Harper. “It’s a different curriculum from what was once taught about sexuality and HIV. The old curriculum was more punitive and narrowly focused. The new focus helps students draw links between themselves, their culture, religion and sexuality.”

The KEC-CS-DePaul campaign is two-pronged, consisting of school-based curriculum and mass media messages that are aired over Radio Waumini, a Catholic radio station in Nairobi. A new initiative, Peer-to-Peer Talking Groups, encourages open discussion among young people on such topics as abstinence and behavior changes, relationships and peer pressure and sexuality.

Through the KEC-CS program, 16 dioceses throughout Kenya now have HIV/AIDS awareness programs operating in the schools. The DePaul team’s work, which began there two years ago, includes helping to enhance the effectiveness of projects already in place. Teachers and consultants shape materials they are using to educate students, but the students themselves are involved as well—helping to develop campaign slogans and providing feedback relative to interactive teaching methods.

KEC-CS was using radio public service announcements (PSAs) as a vehicle to increase awareness of AIDS when the DePaul team arrived, but when the group stepped in, it supplied skills needed to expand the reach of the PSAs to involve youth. “Exciting changes developed when we added the voice of youth,” said Harper. “Young people are tuned in, and now there are several entire radio campaigns with messages written and delivered by young people.”

To date, the KEC-DePaul Kenyan intervention effort has reached more than 21,000 students and 736 teachers have been trained to deliver the school-based curriculum.

In rural areas outside of Nairobi where prevention interventions are more challenging, Harper and his team have established another program in conjunction with the Daughters of Charity, an international community of Catholic women administering to the poor, to bring HIV/AIDS prevention workshops to some of the more remote regions of the country. More than 2,000 youth and adults have participated in the HIV prevention workshops, and more than 300 youth have been trained as HIV peer educators.

“There is so much silence around issues of HIV and AIDS, and we hope to play a role in breaking that silence about this pandemic,” Harper said of DePaul’s work in Kenya. “We do not see ourselves as coming in and ‘saving’ these communities, but instead, helping to find their areas of strength and then working side-by-side to build their capacity to lower the rates of HIV infection.”