Randy Dowding

This Dispatch is written by Randy Dowding who is a graduate of Sociology and will be entering the School of Public Health and Social Work. He writes about his experience at  the CAPRISA (Center for Aids Programme in Research in South Africa) site at Warwick junction in Durban. These were HIV counselors and members of Community Action Boards in Kwa-Zulu Natal. In this video you see a teach back of an acronymn for “facts” the prevention part of the HIV module.

Enjoy, Nesha Z. Haniff

When the “Power of the Module” Takes Hold

As a member of the POA team who volunteers at a local HIV/AIDS testing and counseling center in Ann Arbor and someone who lives with HIV I have a unique perspective in regards to the work of POA.  For me, there is an increased importance in working with other HIV/AIDS activists in S. Africa.  Not only because many of them are also living with HIV, but because much of their work is done in often invisible and disadvantaged communities which are most in need of attention, similar to the communities I work with in the U.S.So when on May 22nd, my 49th birthday, I had the opportunity to work with community HIV/AIDS activists from the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), I felt a sense of urgency that was unique to this challenge.

When teaching the Module to others it depends greatly on trust.  Trust from those we are teaching that the content we are sharing is helpful: most of this trust is derived through and bestowed upon us by the reputation of Dr. Nesha Haniff and her ten years of work in S. Africa with POA.   However, they must also trust that the method we are teaching is unique and will benefit the population the student/activists are teaching.  Further they must come to trust that information about HIV/AIDS they previously thought  took days or weeks to teach could actually be taught in 15-20 minutes, as we claim.

Meeting these challenges each time we teach is daunting.  However, when teaching at CAPRISA, instead of the three days we have spent teaching others, we had four hours to complete the same task.  Further compounding these challenges, less than half of the POA team was working at CAPRISA as the others were working with children at Charles Hugo primary school simultaneously.  Progress was slow the first day and all of us left that day a bit defeated.  We found it very difficult to develop a strategy to meld all the years of experience and knowledge our students possessed with the methodology that called for teaching HIV in 15-20 minutes.  Most of us ended the day having persevered despite the challenges, teaching the Module in English, completing teach backs from the students in English and beginning to work with the students to translate the Module in to their own languages of Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa.

Upon returning on May 23rd and starting to work with our groups, it was clear a miracle had occurred.  With all the groups we have worked with in S. Africa there appears a transformation, a time when the “power of the Module” takes hold.  The point in which those we are teaching see the utility of the Module in speaking directly to those they serve and they begin to take ownership of the method and content.  As educators who believe in empowerment we continued to share  the Module, regardless of the progress we feel, because we knew that it had the ability to revolutionize HIV education for those at CAPRISA as it had for so many others.

Those at CAPRISA saw enough of the “power of the Module” to understand that they could own and deliver HIV education at the level that their community could understand and practice.  Not only had many of them spent the evening teaching each other the Module in English to increase their comprehension, but they had translated the Module in to their native languages and were prepared to teach it upon our return on Thursday.Their teach back in their languages was one of the best, if not the best, of our entire trip.  The passion and clarity with which they delivered the Module brought cheers from everyone.  All this accomplished in just four hours.

This miracle occurred not due to any single event, but because in the words of  Paulo Freire  “trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change,” and above all we trusted the community HIV/AIDS activists of CAPRISA and that is the true “power of the Module” and POA.

Randy Dowding
Pedagogy of Action Team Member 2012

This short clip shows individuals at CAPRISA teaching the “FACTS” portion of the module in several different languages:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wyogKQY3Ac