During the month of October, PSAf scaled up activities under the communicating HIV Prevention project, which is funded by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to empower local communities to drive the HIV response.

The project is being implemented under PSAf’s HIV and AIDS programme to promote open dialogue on cultural issues surrounding Multiple Concurrent Partners (MCPs), prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) and HIV prevention for Sexual Minority Groups, especially men having sex with men. The dialogue is expected to lead to behaviour change and adoption of available interventions at individual and community level, and to promote inclusion of needs and challenges of the most affected in policy and operational plans at national level.

Recognizing the key role that the media can play in empowering local communities to be at the forefront of the response to HIV and AIDS, PSAf held three media training workshops in Lesotho, Swaziland and Zambia. More workshops have been scheduled for the rest of the southern Africa region. The workshops brought together journalists from national and community, print and electronic media establishments from across the three countries. Experts and activists on HIV and AIDS also attended the workshops, and shared their views with the participants on the role the media could play in enhancing awareness on HIV and AIDS.

Journalists who took part at the three workshops in October expressed a lot of enthusiasm and commitment to work with PSAf to raise the profile of the different issues around HIV and AIDS, and spearhead dialogue on sexual minorities. This was clearly expressed through their overwhelming submission of applications for media fellowships being provided under the project.