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.