African Youth Programs Target AIDS

The AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa is decimating this generation of adults and it's also threatening the next generation.
It is estimated that one in every three adults in Zimbabwe is infected with the deadly HIV virus. In neighboring Mozambique nearly half a million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

But Christian young people are fighting back. They are using discussions, drama and even humor to stop the spread of AIDS. This is another report, from our series, on the church's response to AIDS in Africa.

The young people in the African church sing; now it is becoming a song of abstinence until marriage. While many in the church are caring for the sick and dying. Others are stepping forward with enthusiastic messages about prevention. The youth are leading the way in this effort.

Young man Julio Manuel Samudine is the Youth Program Coordinator. He said, "Our youth program has gatherings and meetings like this one that we have done this morning. They are meetings with educational debates."

He went on, "Our conclusion today was to explain to the youth that the practice of sex before marriage has various negative consequences, one of those consequences is the contraction of HIV and AIDS."

"Currently," he added, "we work with 35 different churches and each of these 35 churches has its own activities related to HIV and AIDS. Then after the debates are done here, the youth take the same debate teams and do them in their own church."

Drawing on the local culture, the youth are using music and drama to proclaim their message to the church and the wider community.

In this drama, in Mozambique, a young couple is attacked by HIV after engaging in premarital sex. After the attack, both die.

As the drama unfolds, only those armed with the shields of abstinence and fidelity have the power to defeat AIDS.

Through this type of interactive educational play, the youth are having a big impact on their peers.

Christopher Tshuman is Peer Educator of the ministry called Scripture Union. He said, "I want to help all the young people because I used to be like that. I just want to get the message across because AIDS is very bad in Zimbabwe."

Scripture Union in Zimbabwe is an evangelical peer education group. They work in collaboration with local schools to provide entertaining AIDS education in a classroom setting.

For example, in a skit the body's white blood cells engage in a wrestling match with HIV At first the white blood cells win, but then the HIV takes over and without the white blood cells the body is exposed to a variety of illnesses, the result of AIDS.

Christopher said, "Most of the time we try and put it across in a way that the young can remember, y' know. So, maybe even years from now they say, hey these guys were so funny, but they saved me from getting AIDS. If they'd never told me about AIDS I don't know where I'd be right now."

In a later segment, Christopher said to the class, "You know those drug pushers, and drug addicts. They are likely to get the AIDS virus. You know why? If I take this needle to inject drugs, and give it to the next guy and he also injects himself and gives it to the next guy, and the next and the next, like they do, then the virus-in one of them-can spread to the others, and it might spread to you if you take drugs."

I pray everyday that this work will succeed, even though we might not see the results now, it will be so satisfying maybe 10 years ago, a guy will walk up to me and say I remember you. You came and talked to me about AIDS at that school.

And I'll be like 'Oh, man! Good to see you again! What you doing now?' And it'll be really nice to know that kids survived and didn't get AIDS because of what we're doing. We really want to have an impact, a big impact."

"I have hope," said a young man in the cast. "I do have hope, if I didn't I wouldn't be doing this. I have hope that by learning this much about AIDS and its effects and how it's killing so many people, that finally people can start to change."

The African Church is shattering the silence on AIDS.

The U.S. government is channeling funds to the fight against AIDS in Africa. President Bush's plan requires that a third of the money given must be used only for programs that promote abstinence until marriage.