I love that I am here in India, not as a tourist, but as a volunteer. Rather than randomly exploring tourist sites, we are actually interacting with the community!
The organization I am with, the International Alliance for the Prevention of AIDS (IAPA), was featured this week in an Indian newspaper. The article explains a bit more what we do here.
Basically, we are here teaching high school students about HIV and AIDS. There are over 33.3 million people in the world currently living with HIV and 2.4 million of them are in India. India has the third largest HIV positive population behind South Africa and Nigeria! It is a very serious topic and is often considered taboo to talk about here.
In all our teachings we cover what fluids and doors into the body can transmit HIV, the three different ways of transmission (sexually, blood to blood, and mother to child) how HIV effects the cells and the immune system, the progression of the disease, and how to live a positive life by remaining healthy and getting tested. There are so many misconceptions about HIV and it is our goal to reduce stigma and to educate these students in how to prevent HIV transmission because HIV is 100% preventable! Even in America, discussing safe sex and terms like 'semen' or 'vaginal fluid' can be uncomfortable, but we trie to make it as interesting as possible for the students and incorporate many different activities and games to encourage participation.
Here are pictures with some of the classes we have taught so far!
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