AIDSWEB: HIV/AIDS and ICT Project Update (Winter 2003) ICT for Education Program World Bank Institute Human Development Division (WBIHD)
Dear GKD Members, We wanted to provide you with a summary of some of the most recent AIDSWEB: HIV/AIDS Education and ICT-related activities for your information. Background The AIDSWEB project was launched in 1998 as an initiative of the World Bank Institute's ICT for Education program (formerly the World Links for Development Program) to explore linkages about the use of information and communications technology for use in HIV/AIDS educational and peer outreach related activities. Project activities to date have included an e-mail based collaborative project, teacher exchange visits, adaptation of HIV/AIDS educational material for ICT platforms, and HIV/AIDS and ICT workshops (for schools, policymakers and NGOs) and material development. For further background about the project, please see "Fighting the Insidious Killer: African Teenagers Battle HIV/AIDS Through ICT" in the Fall 2002 issue of the Development Outreach <http://www1.worldbank.org/devoutreach/> or contacting the author, Anthony Bloome, at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In this project update: Upcoming HIV/AIDS and ICT Brown Bag: Print, Radio, Television/Video and Internet (Thursday, February 6th: 12 - 1:30 pm., J1-050) AIDSWEB Project Evaluation Development Gateway Feature Site Kids DevNews World Space Broadcast African Studies Association Presentation HIV/AIDS, ICTs and School-Based Telecenters Workshop (Kampala- September 2002) Exhibit at AFTQK (NEPAD) Knowlege Fair (January 2003) 1) Upcoming HIV/AIDS and ICT Brown Bag: Print, Radio, Television and Internet project examples On Thursday, February 6th from 12:00 - 1:30 p.m., J1-050, the AIDSWEB project organized a brown bag session on Using ICTs to fight HIV/AIDS. The presentation included representatives from various ICT-based initiatives --Internet (WBIHD's ICT for Education AIDSWEB project), digital radio (World Space Foundation), television/video (Discovery Channel Global Education Fund) and one targetting journalists (WBITP's Strategic Communications course) -- talking about their projects using ICTs for HIV/AIDS awareness raising, peer education, and promoting positive school-community prevention activities. About 60 participants attended from the Bank and other international NGOs interested in the workshop. 2) AIDSWEB Project Evaluation We just got back a really exciting independent evaluation about the AIDSWEB: HIV/AIDS and ICT online project and its impact on teachers and student knowledge of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Among other findings, AIDSWEB project participants were twice as likely to accurately quess the four leading methods (transmission) and mode (prevention) as those not participating in the project! We've included a few paragraphs from the Executive Summary below. "In brief, AIDSWEB occupies a unique niche, spanning the entire African continent and offering secondary-school students training and access to technology, accurate information about HIV/AIDS, and hope that they can initiate and sustain action to combat the disease through national and cross-national partnerships. Students appreciated the international exchange, the knowledge gained, and the youth involvement they experience through AIDSWEB. Teachers applaud the project both for its contribution to HIV/AIDS response and for its innovation and self-help strategy through technology. AIDSWEB currently serves approximately 500 youth in 70 schools in 8 African countries. From the outset, AIDSWEB has grown directly out of the expressed need to reach youth in effective and direct ways, to enable them to obtain information in a non-threatening and private manner (through the Internet), and to support their involvement in community action through youth partnerships and teacher mentorship. AIDSWEB has proven particularly resourceful in stretching resources by training motivated teachers to leadership roles as national and school-level AIDSWEB coordinators, and through partnerships with existing sources of relevant information and dialogue about HIV/AIDS?e.g., the AIDSWEB electronic adaptation of the Auntie Stella web site (www.auntiestella.org)." 3) Development Gateway - AIDSWEB Featured Topic The AIDSWEB website/project is the topic feature on this month's Development Gateway HIV/AIDS page <www.developmentgateway.org/hiv>. From here visitors can link directly to the AIDSWEB website <www.aidsweb.org> and also visit several of the youth-developed HIV/AIDS in our Communities websites developed as part of the AIDSWEB Social Action website design competition last year (with support from AFTQK). Last year, 60 sixty schools from six African countries (Botswana, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe) and the U.S. participated in the competition. 4) Kids DevNews - AIDSWEB project citation The AIDSWEB project and website was prominently featured in the first Kids DevNews (WB's External Affairs Department) December 2002 Youth and AIDS publication. For the article, go to the Bank's internal or external websites, type "kids devnews" and then look under "Youth and AIDS" under the Feature Stories button. 5) World Space broadcast to Africa - Auntie Stella website WorldSpace (a digital radio broadcaster) asked for and received permission from us to broadcast the Auntie Stella website (underwritten by AIDSWEB in collaboration with a Zimbabwean NGO, TARSC - www.tarsc.org) over its Africa satellite system. The pages will be downloaded as they appear on the website and then uploaded for broadcast from the WorldSpace satellites. The broadcast can then be received by users with a WorldSpace receiver and includes African physicians, community health workers, farmers, meteorologists, and community development workers, among others. World Space also works with community broadcasters to disseminate the information. You can read more about WorldSpace activities at www.worldspace.org. The Auntie Stella website (www.auntiestella.org) itself provides a series of thirty-three letters on subjects chosen by Zimbabwean teenagers, as well as repllies and ideas about further action. 6) African Studies Association Conference - AIDSWEB Presentation The AIDSWEB project was one of the presenters during an ASA panel organized by the US Dept of State Bureau of Citizen Exchange (a supporter of our project in the past). The session was entitled Citizens' Exchange: Project Reports on Building ICT Capacity in Africa. We'd be happy to e-mail the PPT presentation of the AIDSWEB presentation to anyone who is interested. 7) HIV/AIDS, ICT and School-Based Telecenters Workshop - Uganda Following on from our HIV/AIDS, ICTs and School-Based Telecenters International Workshop linking school-based telecenters and HIV/AIDS NGOs held in Uganda, September 2002, we are working with country partners for next steps project development. The workshop attended by delegates from Rwanda, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Uganda was co-sponsored by the Uganda AIDS Control Project, Ministry of Education, EDC and the World Bank. Examples of follow-up activities include targeting AIDS orphans in Uganda as part of a youth entrepreneurship education and ICT (YouthIT) pilot project currently under way and producing a novel online counseling format (developed by the Straight Talk Foundation) for use in schools. 8) AIDSWEB Exhibit at NEPAD meeting (Accra, January 22-23). A Ghanaian project representative manned an AIDSWEB project exhibit at AFTQK's Knowledge Fair in conjunction with Policy Forum of the Global Coalition for Africa as part of the current NEPAD meeting. This was a great opportunity to showcase the Bank's work with "School-based ICT platforms to help fight HIV/AIDS" Please feel free to pass on this e-mail to other Bank and development colleagues interested in the project and do let us know if you have any questions or comments about the AIDSWEB project. Anthony Bloome AIDSWEB Project Coordinator ICT for Education Program WBIHD 202-473-2282 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
