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The Teacher Capacity Building Project - TCB on HIV prevention is a South-to- South cooperation between the Governments of Botswana and Brazil with support from United Nations Development Programme and African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership. It contributes to the Ministry of Education HIV/AIDS strategic framework through harnessing the experiences of Brazilian communication experts and Botswana education and media professionals to build interactive multimedia communication capacity for distance education in HIV/AIDS prevention. Its main components are curriculum development for HIV and AIDS, television broadcast, provision of ICT in the educational institutions, teacher training and development and program monitoring. The TCB programme aims to contribute to breaking down the silence associated with HIV/AIDS in classroom settings, thus creating opportunity for relevant behavioural change. It further aims to improve teachers’ knowledge and skills on interactive methods and HIV/AIDS through the use of distance education. The beneficiaries are 21782 Teachers, 469,938 students, 974 educational Institutions and media professionals.
The Teacher Capacity Building Project has helped break the silence on HIV and AIDS within the school system. It has helped create:
• Forum for school conversations and dialogue on HIV/AIDS.
• Increased talks on HIV/AIDS in School assembly.
• Reactivation of Peer Support Groups.
• Increased opportunities for open dialogue in the classroom on discussing issues of HIV/AIDS.
• Increased collaboration with parents (PTA)on issues of HIV/AIDS
• Increased rates of voluntary counseling and confidential testing among teachers.
Some of the Indicators used to measure the impact of the project are:
• Percentage of students who have had sex and who used condoms at first sex.
• Percentage of pregnancies among 15-19 year students.
• Percentage of students and teacher who request and undergo HIV testing in the last 12 months.
• Percentage of Teachers and students who have successfully refused to have sex without a condom or successfully insisting on condom use before agreeing to sex.
• Percentage of students and teachers having multiple and serial sexual partners in the last 12 months.
• Mean number of casual partners per year among teachers and sexually active students.
• Illness related absenteeism in school among students and teachers.
• Number of orphans in schools completing education.
The Teacher Capacity Building programme aims to contribute to breaking down the silence associated with HIV/AIDS in classroom settings, creating opportunity for relevant behavioural change. It further aims to improve teachers’ knowledge and skills on interactive methods and HIV/AIDS through the use of distance education and ICT. This will help to break down the cultural barriers which prevent the young and the old to discuss sex and sexuality issues, reduce denial, secrecy and stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS.
The project has teachers, students and communities as beneficiaries.
Talk back is a 60 minute interactive television programme, broadcast live and repeated twice a week on Botswana Television.
Talk Back allows interactivity between viewers and panelists. This has been greatly enhanced through SMS - short text messaging and call-ins during the live broadcast. The use of free communication programmes such as Skype and MSN Messenger are being used to improve viewers discussion and participation.
The project has installed television sets, VCRs, decoders and satellite dishes to allow schools to watch Talk Back.
Further interaction between the programme and the teachers is provided through the country’s education centres in the form of in-service workshops and seminars.