HIV/AIDS Project - Pt. I

Friday, March 20th was the first activity of several up and coming events related to my HIV AIDS prevention and awareness project which was funded by PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Action Plan for AIDS Relief).

Our school had a dance to help raise awareness about the problem of HIV/AIDS in Ukraine, Europe, and the world. It was mostly organized by my PEPFAR colleague, Inna, a teacher of biology at my school who attended a week long training seminar with me in Kyiv provided by Peace Corps.

We’ve had some disagreements and a few snags with the implementation of our project, mainly due to lack of experience executing a real project with real money and the language barrier. Most of my time is spent speaking English as my primary work is teaching English as a foreign language. Not to mention, she speaks Surzhik rather heavily, a blend of Ukrainian and Russian, so my Ukrainian vocabulary has slowly increase.

We invited all students from 8th grade and up from my school and School Number 2 where my site mate Chris works. At first I was uncertain as only a handful of students arrived by the official start time, 4:00pm. We pushed back the opening speeches and introductions by an hour and students danced and talked while others arrived. At 5:00pm we had about 30-35 students, which was less than we were both expecting. Anya, an 11th grader, gave an introduction of my project work with Inna which includes training teachers to be service providers and how to talk to kids about HIV/AIDS and then I gave a short speech in Russian.


Good evening. I would like to say that we have worse diseases than HIV and AIDS; for example, fear, hatred, ignorance, and discrimination.

HIV and AIDS are problems which are both important and serious. This is not only a problem for people citizens of Ukraine, but citizens of the world. We have a responsibility so that people who live with HIV and AIDS don’t live alone.

Ukraine has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in Europe. Protect yourself and those you love.

And remember that HIV is not transmitted through laughter or friendship, and certainly not through dance. Let’s dance! In Ukraine and America, it’s fashionable [smart] to be healthy.

The students starting cheering despite my inability to pronounce the word ignorance in Russian, obyazannast. The students organized the music and acted as DJs and every fourth song or so, students gave information about HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention, which was executed wonderfully.

They spoke about Freddie Mercury, the former leadsinger of Queen who died of AIDS. Queen is an exceptionally popular group in Ukraine and only last year the remaining members performed an HIV/AIDS benefit concert in Kharkiv for free in front of about 300,000 screaming Ukrainians. After speaking about the death of Mercury, they played a Queen song and every student knew every word in English and as they screamed the words at the top of their lungs I felt foolish as I didn’t even recognize the song!

I’m really proud of my counterpart and how well she planned the activity. We had about fifty students come and raised just under 40 UAH which at the current exchange rate is about 5 dollars but for Ukraine that is quite a bit. At first I was disappointed at the small turnout, but the students had so much fun and as I thanked them as they left, they said “No, thank you!” which totally sealed the event as being a success.

I never thought dancing with 14-17 year olds for three hours would be so much fun, but really it was a great time. Chris came as well as one student from his school and it was just a great, fun, positive environment.

In two weeks, we will be having a Rock Festival at school. Three of our school’s rock groups will play. My good friend Curtis will accompany me on some acoustic songs as well which makes me excited. In between groups, Inna will show segments from the Queen concert in Kharkiv which was broadcasted. It’ll show information about Mercury’s life, HIV in Ukraine, and select songs from the group. I can’t wait for this event as rock is more popular than the disco scene and more students will come as they won’t be expected to dance – or at least I hope this forecast comes true.


So signing of with our project’s slogan, It’s smart to be healthy!