AIDS Awareness for Garment Workers

Introduction

Bangalore is known as the IT City or the Silicon Valley of India, but many of us don’t know that it is also one of the largest Textile Hubs in India. Lakhs of people work in the textile industry and almost 80 – 85% of the workers are women. These women are either from economically weaker section or have very minimal literacy or face a lot of domestic violence in their personal life.

Opportunity
Speading HIV/AIDS awareness to these women of Garment industry was one of the top priorities for iVolunteer-ASHA Group. However, we never got an opportunity to address them, since we didn’t have any contacts in the garment industry and we didn’t know how to approach them.
But, finally thanks to Ms. Saranya Hegde, President of Mahila Dakshita Samiti and also Latashree, Welfare Officer of Integra Apparels, for approaching ASHA Foundation and giving us an opportunity to conduct HIV/AIDS Awareness to almost 500+ women working in Integra Apparels.

Event Intro
The event was organized at 5:00PM on 28th July 2007 at Integra Apparels in HSR Layout.
Due to rain the event started a bit late by 5:30 PM with a brief introduction by Ms. Saranya Hegde, who spoke about women empowerment, security for women and also some activities done by Mahila Dakshita Samiti.

After introduction the stage was open for the volunteers of iVolunteer-ASHA Group, Vijayanand started the session by asking the crowd to come on stage and talk about any topic of their choice. 1st person spoke about the excellent work environment and co-operative supervisors of Integra, 2nd person gave a welcome note to the volunteers and for the 3rd person Vijayanand gave the topic to speak i.e. “Physical Relationship or Sex”, since 85% of HIV Transmission is because of unprotected sex. The lady who came on stage stammered and could not speak much about this topic.
Vijayanand related this sequence to the kind of society which we are living in, where SEX is considered as taboo and hence nobody talks about it, which leads to lack of knowledge and in turn results in unprotected sex and eventually getting infected with HIV/AIDS.

The Skit
To give more details about the various modes of transmission, the next thing on the agenda was a skit by all the volunteers – Asif, Sayeesh, Aruna, Emal and Meena. The skit was very well performed and brought out all the important aspects related to HIV/AIDS i.e.
Modes of transmission – Sexual Contact, Blood transfusion (without blood test), usage of un- sterilized syringe and Pregnant mother to child,
Prevention – Usage of condoms, practicing abstinence (being mutually faithful to spouse after marriage), avoiding peer pressure, usage of sterilized needles, blood testing before transfusion.
Emal, acting as the doctor did a splendid job in explaining that even if a person is infected with HIV, still he/she can lead a normal healthy life with proper adherence to medication. This was the most important message to be conveyed to the crowd.

Each volunteer pitched in with excellent performance, though many of them were performing for the 1st time. Asif(Charecter: Ganesh) as the good guy was at his best with the correct expressions at the correct time, Sayeesh (Charecter: Badri) as the bad guy has mastered the charecter since this was his 4th performance. Emal (Charecter: Doctor) gave a very natural performance and she highlighted one very important point while counseling i.e. "Even if a person is infected with HIV, still he/she can lead a good healthy life with proper adherence to medication". This was a very important point for the audience. Even Aruna (Charecter: Geeta, Ganesh's wife) and Meena (Charecter: Nurse) though had a small role but she gave their best......

Other details
Once the skit was over Vijayanand summarized all the key points and Sayeesh started off explaining the Modes of Non-transmission with the use of flip charts, which had excellent self-explanatory pictures. Sayeesh, though doing this for the 1st time, explained everything clearly and lots of misconceptions or myths about HIV/AIDS were cleared.
In continuation, Vijayanand explained in detail about Prevention of Mother to Child transmission since 90% of the audience was women. The information was also displayed through placards held by Amit and Sumith.

Conclusion
Finally, Sunita concluded the session by announcing the AIDS Helpline number 1097 and ASHA Foundation’s direct counseling number 23543333. The audiences were very keen to note it down.
We all hope that they make use of the services of ASHA Foundation and also the knowledge gained through the awareness session and keep themselves and their near and dear ones safe from HIV infection.
Special thanks to Integra Apparels for showing corporate responsibility towards their employees and organizing this event.
Looking forward for many more such event.....

Mother's Day at Vidyanikethan

14th May 2006 – Mother’s Day …a significant occasion to admire the special person in everybody’s life – “Mother”.

On such a special day the iVolunteer-ASHA group decided to organize a memorable event for Rural Women on “Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS” at Vidyanikethan (Society for Education & Social Development), Jaraganahalli, J.P. Nagar (Post), Bangalore.

Vidyanikethan is an NGO with an aim of uplifting the Social, Education, Health, Environmental and Economic status of the societies. It visualizes itself as working to enable the rural poor such as women, dalits, tribal landless labours and unemployed youths - to move towards sustainable development through over all increase in knowledge and quality of life, socio economic and personal status in society.

This event was also special to all of us because we were performing a Street Play as the primary mode of AIDS Awareness for the first time. In fact many of us were acting for the first time and some of the volunteers didn’t know kannada as well.…but we were all confident that the play would be a big hit since the storyline of the play was excellent.
The event started with a brief introduction of all the volunteers by Anna, followed by the street play.
The characters of the play were Husband & Wife – enacted by Vijayanand and Claire
Husband’s friends – enacted by Arun & Sayan
Baby’s Voice – Background voice given by Vinod
AIDS Counselor – enacted by Shilpa
Placards Display - by Gaurav & Archana

The most important scene of the play was “when the baby speaks to the father from the womb and conveys its anxiety about being HIV infected, because of the father’s loose character prior to marriage”. Everybody (all the women in the audience) loved this scene very much since it gave a strong emotional touch. (Thanks to Arun’s sister for giving us the storyline).

Then to add some filmy spice to the play Vinod came up with a funny remix of a superhit kannada song to remember ASHA Foundation’s AIDS Helpline numbers. This concluded the street play and the excellent acting skills of all the volunteers were very well applauded.

Then Vijayanand took over to give some in-depth knowledge about HIV/AIDS and stressed upon the need for counseling from a professional counselor before and after HIV testing. He also pointed out about the discrimination and stigma faced by HIV infected people from the society and the importance of awareness about HIV/AIDS in the society to eliminate such social reaction.
Finally Vijayanand, Shilpa and Vinod (the only 3 kannada speaking volunteers) answered all the questions and cleared all the doubts raised by the women.

We all were happy and satisfied to have celebrated Mother’s Day in such a wonderful way.

Stree Jagruthi Samithi

24th March 2007, some of the iVolunteer-Asha team members - Vijayanand, Sunita, Sayeesh and Arun were at Rotary Club–Yuvaka Sangha, Jayanagar, Bangalore to participate in an event organized by the volunteers of Accenture, Bangalore for the members of Stree Jagruthi Samithi - around 130 women, mostly working as domestic servents.

The activities planned during the event were as follows:
1) Awareness on HIV/AIDS
2) Skit by volunteers
3) Games by Valli and Sultana
4) Medical Check Up
5) Distribution of gifts and other items

The event started off with a powerful speech by Geeta Menon, Chairman of Stree Jagruthi Samithi. She spoke about various issues which women have to face in their daily life and highlighted the importance of women empowernment, financial independance, ability to handle domestic violence etc.
This speech set a good platform for Vijayanand to emphasize on the need for "Keeping good health" or "Having resistance to various infections" not just for self but for the entire family, so as to fulfill various personal and family necessities.
Highlighting the alarming facts and making them realize the gravity of the situation, Vijayanand explained the social discrimination shown towards the people infected with HIV and stressed on the need for Awareness or Knowledge about HIV/AIDS. Then he explained in details the
Modes of HIV/AIDS transmission
Modes of Non-transmission
Importance of HIV/AIDS Testing
10 things to practice for HIV/AIDS Prevention

Then Sunita took over and asked them to give a brief summary of the all points explained by Vijay. It was really very good to see that they were attentive and had understood most of the things explained by Vijay.
In the end Arun and Sayeesh distributed the pamphlets to all of them and asked them to contact the AIDS Helpline or visit ASHA Foundation for any further assistance.
One more successful event by iVolunteer-Asha Group…
Thanks to Ms. Anna Lopez (Corporate Citizenship Manager of Accenture) for inviting us and giving us this extremely satisfying opportunity to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS.

Makkala Jagruti

On 24rd June 07, the iVolunteer-ASHA Group was at Makkala Jagruti an NGO, whose focus is to work with underprivileged children in the area of education. However, we were there to enrich the children’s knowledge on HIV/AIDS. The age group of the children was between 11years to 16years.

The program started at 11:15 AM and as usual the agenda was to have
- Ice Breaker Game
- Skit
- Details about HIV and
- Quiz

We were about to start the Ice Breaker game of Idli-Vada-Dosa but to our surprise the children already knew the game. However we went ahead with the same game and made it more exciting by picking few delicacies, which the children liked – Biryani, Masala Kallekai (Masala Groundnuts), Soup and Chum Chum (sweet), instead of the usual Idli-Vada-Dosa. Children really enjoyed the game.
It really doesn’t take much time to get along with children, their innocence and naughtiness reminded us of our good old school days. Childhood is the best time of a person’s life.

Coming back to program, the game had set a very good platform to move on to the next point on agenda - the skit. After a brief introduction of the actors, Vijay and Sayeesh started the skit with great enthusiasm and were very well supported by Neetu – the Doctor, Asha – the Wife, Amit – for making the stage arrangements and the new volunteer Tarangini – as the Nurse.

We could make out that the children were watching the skit with immense interest. This facilitated the Narrator (Vijay was the Narrator since Asif hadn’t come) to smoothly give away the punch lines of the skit on Modes of HIV Transmission and Prevention after each scene.

The inquisitive mind of a child was very much evident, with the kind of questions or doubts they came up with after the skit. Vijay answered all their questions, cleared all their doubts and also ensured that there were no misconceptions left. It was relatively tough to address their questions especially at their level of understanding, since many of them were too young and didn’t precisely know about sexual contact, condoms etc.

But, we were able to prevail over all these challenges and were able to provide the accurate information about HIV/AIDS. The children expressed their gratitude for having received so much knowledge about HIV/AIDS and thanked all the volunteers.

This was one more success story of iVolunteer-ASHA Group…

Meeting at Ivolunteer office (May 19, 2007 -- 2:30 PM to 4:15 PM)

My friend and I were playing scrabble; Suddenly I looked at my watch and almost shouted "OMG!, it is 2:00 PM". "So, what happened?", She asked me. "I have a meeting in Koramangala at 2:30 PM and we haven't done our lunch; Let's make it fast" I started wrapping up the board and letters while she went to kitchen to get the food. We finished the lunch by 2:15 PM and then I started by formula 1 race from Jayanagar to Koramangala.

Exactly at 2:30 PM, I was in Ivolunteer office in Koramangala where I met Vijai who just joined Ivolunteer. He is interested in spending time with HIV/AIDS infected people. I said, "Wow, that's an excellent Idea". We don't have this color in our group at present and I am sure Vijai will have great time here and he will share some of his experiences through this forum. Welcome Abroad!

Anshu, Asif and Harsh joined me soon and we decided to wait for others. In the mean time I contacted Sayeesh, Neetu, Moin, Parul on their mobiles. Neetu had some emergency, Moin and Sayeesh were not joining us because of some personal work and Parul's phone was not reachable. As Claire, Sunitha and Vijay already informed so we started the meeting.

PPT review: The main agenda of the meeting was to discuss the PPT but as we didn't have Moin and Parul (who were supposed to come up with Ideas) so we skipped this step for the time being.

WHO PDF review: Harsh circulated one pdf by WHO last week and he brought couple of copies of print out. We had a look at different slides and found that it is covering all the possible points in a nice and coherent manner. Harsh proposed an Idea of embedding the voices of characters in the presentation to make it more interactive and attractive. We started counting minimum number of characters required and the count was four which included two boys and two girls. Again we stuck up as there was no girl in the meeting so we moved this item as well to next meeting. We started discussing the technical details of the presentation. As it was WHO presentation so we need to get an official approval for the same. Also we needed a voice recorder and notebook to merge voices and presentation slides. Hence, we finished our meeting with some ARs.

AR: Amit: To get the WHO approval for using the presentation material
Harsh: To get the voice recorder to record the voices
Asif: To bring his notebook to merge the voice with slides


Attendees (In order of appearance): Amit, Anshu, Asif and Harsh

Meeting at Ivolunteer office (May 12, 2007 -- 3:30 PM to 6:15 PM)

3:30 PM -

I reached the iVolunteer office in Kormanagala and found Sunitha, Moin and Mukul waiting for others. Soon Vijay joined us in the office followed by Parul, Sayeesh and one new volunteer Neetu (Welcome to the group Neetu and I am sure you will have fun here). As we settled down and were enjoying the snacks sponsored by Sunitha, Harsh also joined us. Soon we finalized the following Agenda for the meeting:

1. An introduction about ASHA Foundation and team members for new member Neetu.
2. Watch video clips brought by Amit and discuss their usage with different target audience
3. Improvements in the skit
4. Event planning for employees of 'The Park Hotel".

Introduction - Sunitha told us the detailed history of ASHA Foundation and its progress till date, then all the volunteers shared their stories about joining Ivolunteer and ASHA Foundation, their motivations and experiences. In the end the new volunteer (Neetu) narrated how did she come to know about the 2 organizations.

Video clips - Then all of us started reviewing the video clips downloaded from youtube.

Couple of them were covering the basics of the HIV/AIDS and few others were interviews of HIV/AIDS patients. In the interview videos, all of patients highlighted about the discrimination and humiliation experienced by then from the society. In couple of videos we found quite good information to put in the start of our presentations. After looking at all the clips we found that most of the videos are targeted either for one particular way of transmission or for one particular section of the society. So we finalized that we can use some of the video clippings (not the entire video) in our presentations at different places to make it more interactive.

Also we all felt that we need to shoot some videos on our own keeping our requirements in mind.

Skit improvements - We had couple of successful skit sessions at Juvenile home and SOS village and it is time that we need to look at the next level which is improvements in current script. Apart from the ideas which we discussed in the mails, we found couple of more improvements in the skit like avoiding the visit of Badri to brothel and the scene of taking drugs.

Planning of the "The Park" event - We couldn't discuss much about it as we were short of time and the event date was not yet finalised.

Attendees (In Order of appearance) - Sunitha, Moin, Mukul, Amit, Vijay, Parul, Sayeesh, Neetu, Harsh

Journey So Far...

It was a routine Friday evening; I had finished all my work in advance so that I can sprint back home to enjoy the weekend. However that day, 16th December 2005, I had to go elsewhere – No. 99, Cox Town, Bangalore (the old address of iVolunteer, Bangalore office) to meet Ms. Antonette Lopez (earlier Center Manager).
I reached the iVolunteer office with lots of desire to change the world but to my surprise I saw a message, which said, “Stop thinking about making this world a better place, because intensions don’t make difference, Volunteers Do”.

Even Anna conveyed the same message during our brief talk on volunteering, different kinds of social issues and the various NGO involved. She explained certain basic etiquettes of being a volunteer (Do’s and Don’t) and she also made me realize that I need to start small but think big; Subsequent to my chat with Anna I decided to start with “environmental issues”. I felt happy about taking the right strides in fulfilling my societal goals. But even after 2 months no work or volunteering opportunities came my way, which was annoying me.

Then one fine day I received the iVolunteer-Monthly Newsletter of January 2006 where I read about volunteering opportunity in ASHA Foundation regarding AIDS Awareness. Though this wasn’t my initial choice of issue, which I wanted to work for, the impatience and also keenness to do something made me contact Anna, got the necessary details and reached ASHA Foundation.
Spoke comprehensively with Sunita (Counselor) and Dr. Glory Alexander (Director of ASHA Foundation) about the support which I can provide and also understood their requirements. Dr. Glory fixed Sunita as the Project Coordinator for all the volunteering activities on behalf of ASHA Foundation.

But managing volunteers or delegating volunteering activities was completely new for Sunita and volunteering was new to me. In essence we both didn’t know where to start or what to start or how to start?

But we didn’t have to worry since we had the able guidance of iVolunteer, which helped us form a small group of volunteers including me, Gaurav, Claire, Shilpa, Sayan, Vinod and Arun. We called ourselves iVolunteer-ASHA Group.

Sunita gave us exhaustive knowledge on HIV/AIDS and knowing the harmful effects of this virus further strengthened our desire to volunteer for this cause. All of us brainstormed a lot for over a month and decided upon our strategy of spreading AIDS Awareness.

The first event was publicizing the AIDS Helpline numbers through SMS to all our friends…a simple beginning but surprisingly it was a huge success. Counseling calls started pouring in on ASHA’s AIDS helpline. Thus the message was very clear “Many people require knowledge or awareness about AIDS and we as volunteers need to do provide it”.

And as in all stories after a good beginning the author says, “The rest is History….”. It is the scenario with our group as well;

However over the past few months the volunteers have changed but the initial desire, enthusiasm and zeal has remained the same and we have continued to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS to various section of the society in different forums through different means – SMS, EMAIL, Internet Communities, groups and blogs, Street Play, Presentations, Talk, Workshops, Display of Posters and games.

CLick Here ----> The event so far....

Feedback: SOS village - Bangalore (May 06, 2007)

The event on Sunday was one of the best execution till date we had and I like to appreciate the efforts put by Claire and Prarthana for their

prompt performances in the play. Three cheers for your guys!!! About the improvements, these will keep going and we will never be perfect

so don't be disappointed by that and let's move forward with positive attitude. --- Amit Mittal

Congrats to everyone for making the show a hit. --- Claire Philip

Kudos to iVolunteer-ASHA group for continuing its excellent work on spreading HIV/AIDS Awareness.

Yesterday's AIDS Awareness event at SOS Village for rural women (as part of their Family Welfare Program) was a big success, thanks to the best efforts put in by all the volunteers - Asif, Amit, Vijayanand, Claire, Sayeesh, Asha, Shilpa, Mukul and Prarthana. I could make out that the women were really very happy for gaining the knowledge on HIV/AIDS....since many of them personally came and thanked Asif, Me, Sayeesh and other for imparting the knowledge. I guess we incorporated most of the areas of improvement which we had identified after the last session. Also, we did really well in making it more women related talk than men related session (by displaying placards and stressing on prevention of Mother to child transmission) --- Vijayanand Nagaraj

This time we were did do the whole show great except for a few hiccups here are there. Plaques really helped get the attention. --- Asif

Girls Juveinile Home (May 01, 2007)

“Yes, The play was superb.. So was the acting of all concerned.” - Moin

“Hi Folks,

Yesterday's program at the Girls Juveinile Home was really good. Everything went on as per plan.

Starting with the gaming expert - Prarthana's "Idli-Vada-Dosa" game, then the enthusiasm shown by the girls by displaying their talents in Singing, Joking and also excellent bharatnatyam dance and finally the very well performed skit which conveyed almost all aspects of HIV/AIDS.

I guess the girls were really impressed with the acting of Sayeesh (Badri - The Bad Guy) :-), because after the skit when Asif asked all of them "How did the child get infected with HIV?" ...everybody unanimously said "Because of Badri" :-)

Also Kudos to Asif - The Narrator for managing the Kannada dialogues really well...and conveying the Message of the Skit in an articulate way.

Thanks to Sunita for summarizing all the points...stressing on need for prevention especially for girls.

Thanks to Srikanth for providing beautiful and meaningful information about Rangoli....and the girls really loved and enjoyed the rangoli competitions. It was a great end to a wonderful beginning.

The event is over but I am still wondering... "Those girls were feeling so shy or scared to even speak or participate, then how or what made them commit those crimes for which they were put in the observation home?".

I am happy and feel satisfied to have contributed atleast 3 hours (3PM - 6PM) of happiness, knowledge and joy in their dark life. May God bless them with good future ahead” - Vijayanand

SOS Village - Bangalore

Sunday 10:15 A.M., I reached Shoppers' stop after having light breakfast at home. It took me hardly 30 minutes as there was no traffic on the way. As was expected, I was the first person to reach there. Before Mukul would have join me, I enjoyed cool breeze in front of the Mall. Later on, Asif accompanied us followed by Vijay and then Prarthana, Asha and Claire. We dumped all our stuff needed for the event in Claire's car and started for our destination "SOS village".

After riding for around 6-7 Km, Asif, Mukul, Vijay and I reached the village. Vijay met the person in the office who introduces us to Bindiya. Soon Sayeesh joined with one of his friend Shilpa. We were still waiting for the ladies to join us but there was no sign of their presence. Vijay called Prarthana to find out their whereabouts but they themselves didn't have much clue. While Vijay was talking to Prarthana, I left for the Bannerghatta Road to see if they are somewhere near the junction. After waiting for 5 minutes, ladies joined me at the junction and we entered in the village after having an introductory talk with Bindiya.

We entered in the village and we found our self in a beautifully maintained children home which was nowhere less than any decent resort. The concept of SOS village is a small village kind of place where we have many 3 rooms cottages with all basic amenities. In every single cottage, twelve children will be staying like a family and will be taken care by a woman who will be mother for these kids for rest of their lives. After the schooling till metric, these kids will go to college to get higher studies. At this time, the children will be staying in a hostel or PG and will be taken care by a single woman (similar to the kids in the village). Today these women were coming to the village to collect their paychecks for their families running costs. I was really happy to see a girl who has completed her studies and now working. This fact touched my core and boosted my morale and confidence saying that "Nothing is impossible if you have determination and commitment". After having a cup of tea in the village, we went back to the common room where we need to start the event.


As soon as we entered in the room, we found our self standing in front of 40-50 mothers who were waiting for us. Vijay introduces all of us to the group there and told about agenda for the event, Ivolunteer and ASHA foundation.

We moved to agenda decided on Saturday and as usual Ice breaker was "Idli, vada, dosa...". Initially we thought that it won't work here as the target audience's age is around 30+ on average but it worked. It means that this will work everywhere and it is going to be the usual Ice breaker for rest of the events (hope so). Prarthana is very experienced in it and she did well again.


Then Vijay took the charge and called one of the mother in the group for a free talk. Soon all of them were quite open with the group and talking freely. Then a person sand a song there and the voice was amazing. In the end of the song, we came to know that the person can't see but his other senses were so strong that unknown person will be amazed by it and we realized it by the end of our event. After the free talk, Vijay asked one of the mother to talk about the sex but again as expected, there was no response.

We moved to our next item which was the play for HIV/AIDS awarenss. We were missing our two actors Parul (wife) and Sunitha(doctor) but these were replaced by Prarthana and Claire respectively and both of them picked very well. Keeping in mind that there was no practice session, I would say that both of them were awesome. The play went well with some minor hick ups which we need to improve with time and practice. The hoardings brought by Vijay were quite useful for audience to understand the skit. Following are the ways of HIV transmission which we covered through the play:

1. HIV transmission during intercourse which can be avoided by:
1. not having multiple partners and be faithful to the spouse.
   
2. Using condoms correctly and consistently during the intercourse.
   
2. HIV transmission through the usage of used syringe which can be avoided by:
1. saying no to use a used syringe.
2. sterilize the used syringe before using if we don't have any other option.
3. HIV transmission through blood transfer which can be avoided by checking the blood of the person, who is donating, for HIV/AIDS infection before transmitting.
4. HIV transmission through mother to child during pregnancy or through breast feeding which can be avoided:
   
1. taking precautions and proper checkup in the pregnancy period.
2. avoid breast feeding by HIV infected mother.

Play got finished and then we used the hoardings, which we brought specially to educate women, to explain the causes and their consequences to the mothers. The session went in quite detailed and Vijay answered all the queries raised by mothers. We were quite happy to see the invlvement of mothers in the group.

As we finished the agenda, every single mother wished all the group members and we departed from there with some new knowledge, concept and awareness.