A Day in the Life of Ukraine: May 5th, 2012

I've been really behind on my blog since our school had exams to finish up the semester, and now that school is out I have a little more time on my hands... This blog post was my submission to "A Day in the Life of Ukraine," a project organized by two Peace Corps Volunteers, Melissa Krut and Andrew Cartright. The idea of the project is to capture a glimpse into the diversity of life in Ukraine, with many people from all over the country sharing their personal stories and experiences on one day of the year. 

On May 5^th, 2012 my sitemate Sam Choi and I conducted a mini-camp for students from our schools. This camp was focused on HIV/AIDS education and awareness, and each of the volunteers taught a lesson with the help of one of Sam’s 11^th grade students. The camp was funded by Sam’s PEPFAR grant – also known as the Presidents Executive Program for AIDS Relief.  

The students are showing off the posters that they made about HIV. 

Due to a lack of education about HIV and AIDS, many Ukrainians are afraid of anything associated with this disease. This leads to an enormous stigma attached to being HIV positive in this country so therefore, many people choose not to get tested because simply being seen walking into a testing center may lead to problems in their professional and private lives. These are just a few of the reasons why it is especially important to teach accurate information about prevention and transmission to better educate our communities, hopefully also reducing stigma and discrimination. 

We began the camp by playing some classic American summer camp games as icebreakers, such as “Let Me See Your Funky Chicken,” "Baby Shark" and “Boom Chicka Boom”. Ukrainian kids always think that these types of active songs and games are hilarious because they don't tend to sing such songs at Ukrainian camps. 

Acting out "Baby Shark" - this is the part where they saw a shark... 

After that, the students were divided into 5 teams and we began teaching our lessons. I taught a lesson with one of Sam's 11th form students, Ira Melenchenko, about HIV Biology and Transmission. 

The other lessons were Prevention, Stigma and Discrimination, Statistics and a condom demonstration. The students rotated through all of the lessons during the day with their teams. I think that the students enjoyed the team-taught lessons, we did our best to make these serious topics interesting so that they would pay attention and be active participants. 

10th form boys listening in their lesson. 

Learning about prevention.

Discussing stigma and discrimination. 

The camp lasted from 10am until 4pm, and we invited several other Peace Corps Volunteers from our Oblast to come help teach lessons and work with the students. Sam conducted a “training of trainers” with some of his students last year, and they have been actively helping him with his HIV-related projects during the course of this year.

Kyle lesson planning with 2 of the girls.

We took a break during the afternoon to have some relay races and let the kids run around outside. The Ukrainian kids had never participated in what Americans would consider to be classic outdoor games, such as a 3-legged race or wheelbarrow race. This was an interesting cross-cultural moment: whereas American children think that its perfectly normal to run around barefoot, Ukrainian children are mildly appalled by this idea and some of them actually grimaced at the thought of taking their shoes off. 

The boys are ready to start the wheelbarrow race. 

The girls thought taking just 1 shoe off was crazy... 

Working together to figure out how to make a pyramid with 6 people was challenging. 

But they got it... this team was the winner! 

Throughout the day, each team of students worked to help paint two benches that Sam bought for their AIDS Memorial Garden. Each student had the opportunity to paint their name or a fact about HIV. Some students even painted statistics that they learned during the day! 

Starting to paint the red ribbon for HIV awareness. 

a few girls working on their sections. 

The two finished HIV/AIDS Memorial benches! 

The last step in Sam's PEPFAR grant is to plant some red flowers in the shape of a giant red ribbon, and they will place the two benches along the garden to complete the AIDS Memorial. Sam is still currently working on digging the garden, so I'll post up some photos here when he is finished (maybe in a week or so). 

Kicking off the Spring with My HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign

I apologize for getting behind in my blog.... but a few weekends ago, I took advantage of the nation-wide Saturday school to organize two consecutive HIV/AIDS education and awareness training seminars. We had Saturday school so that International Women's day (March 8th) could be turned into a 4-day weekend. These seminars marked the first part of my HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign project in my small town, funded by a PEPFAR grant - Presidents Executive Program for AIDS Relief.

The first training was for teaching professionals from the Lyceum (my school). We also invited teachers from the Gymnasium (the other school in our town), doctors from the local hospital, and social workers from the local kindergarten.

With the teachers who attended my training.

I invited my friend Alex to come to my school as a professional HIV/AIDS trainer who works at many different Peace Corps events, he has also worked for the Kharkiv office of the All-Ukrainian Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS for the past 4 years. The training covered the biology, 4 stages, transmission, treatment, and stigma/discrimination concerning HIV and AIDS. I hope that my teachers enjoyed the training since Alex made it more active and interesting than normal school lessons :)

My counterpart presenting her group's drawing of how t-cells and b cells work in the body.

Our director and school psychologist debating which stage of HIV they have with a social worker.  

Everyone discussing which groups of people are guilty/not guilty .

The second training was for 10th and 11th form students. This training was pretty similar to the one for the teachers, except the students did a few more exercises that are meant for younger people. The goal of training 10th and 11th form students is that they will be able to train our 8th and 9th form students (instead of me or my teachers simply teaching the lesson). Now my school psychologist and I are preparing to finish up the second part of my project during our school's "practicum" week at the end of May by training the 8th and 9th formers with the help of our older students.

Drawing their interesting interpretation of the biology of HIV. 

Some of the girls presenting their biology poster. 

Organizing themselves into the 12 proper steps of how to use a condom correctly. 

Me and all the kids together with our certificates! 

 I think that my students enjoyed working with Alex very much, because it not only got them out of normal classes for school.... they got sweet professional certificates with their name printed on each of them (I created the template and we bought glossy photo paper to print them off in color) and we also prepared a beautifully Ukrainian sandwich lunch for free :D

Slicing up sausage and salo, Ukrainian style! 

A true Ukrainian sandwich lunch... with meat, cucumbers, apples, coffee, tea and cookies! 

PEPFAR Conference About HIV/AIDS Awareness and Education

So I know its been a while since my last post, and I promised to upload photos from my travels with Annie... but things have been busy since school started. I had the opportunity to attend the PEPFAR conference with our school psychologist Irina Ivanovna about HIV/AIDS awareness and education. PEPFAR stands for President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and it is an international Peace Corps initiative.

With a few Ukrainian counterparts and Doug Teschner (our PC Country Director).

Ira and I in front of the banners :)

Ira and I with Andriy, the Peace Corps PEPFAR coordinator. 

 Last week, Irina and I joined about 25 Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts from their school or organizations in Kalamets-Podilsky for the conference. The sanatorium that we stayed at turned out to be a beautiful resort on a lake... western Ukraine is so green and pretty! We were lucky to have a few days of clear weather, we spent our coffee breaks outside enjoying the scenery and sunshine : )

Alex, Maria, Robin, Patrick and Kym.

Robin, Alex, me, Amanda and Abby.

Just stopping to smell the flowers.

Ira and I by the fountain.

with Abby and Amanda, the other counselors from Camp HEAL and OHALOW :)

No conference is complete without a jumping photo.

We spent a week learning about the biology of HIV/AIDS, methods of transmission, stages of infection, stigma and discrimination, and we also had a few very valuable language lessons on HIV/AIDS terminology in Russian. We also had a few guest speakers who came to tell us their stories as HIV positive individuals, one was an intravenous drug user (IDU) and one was a commercial sex worker. It was really interesting to hear about their firsthand experiences with living with HIV/AIDS in Ukraine and listen to their opinions about how Peace Corps Volunteers can work with our communities to help educate about HIV/AIDS.

PCVs learning about ways of transmission.

An joint session between PCVs and Ukrainian counterparts, working on a stigma/discrimination activity.

Learning about the different stages of HIV in a Russian language class.

I had a great time at the PEPFAR conference, and I think that Ira (my school psychologist) enjoyed it as well. It was great to meet other Ukrainian counterparts and talk to other volunteers about their different experiences working with organizations in their community. I am excited to start organizing a project at my own site, we are planning on doing a small presentation on  December 1st, HIV/AIDS Awareness Day!