A three day training workshop in Dakar, Senegal from 4th – 6th February 2008 brought together national coordinators of the EFAIDS programmes in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Rwanda.
The training equipped coordinators with the skills and knowledge to impart two new EI-EFAIDS tools entitled ‘Inclusion is the Answer: Unions Involving and Supporting Educators living with HIV’ and ‘Building a Gender-Friendly School Environment’ which can be accessed at http://www.ei-ie.org/efaids/en/documentation_ei.php.
Fruitful discussions were held on how to represent the interests of HIV positive members, how to address the often taboo issue of homosexuality, how to promote gender parity and how to tackle sexual harassment in schools.
On the theme of gender-safe schools, discussion centred on unequal sexual relationships between students and older people in all three countries. It was acknowledged that the phenomenon of ‘sugar-daddies’ or ‘Chic-choc’ was particularly marked in Rwanda. The Ministries of Education generally have a Code of Ethics but teachers are poorly informed and unions have yet to formulate clear policy provisions on appropriate behaviour. There was a consensus on formulating and implementing concrete policies based on the EI Declaration of Ethics and this was integrated into union action plans. All three coordinators expressed interest in undertaking a sample survey of learning institutes to help formulate appropriate policies.
Discussions on how to support HIV positive colleagues highlighted that the incidence of HIV positive union members was not comparable to Eastern Africa. Nonetheless it was seen as important to pre-empt HIV positive teachers from organising separate structures by promoting inclusion and encouraging solidarity in already existing organisations.
Participants also discussed reworking the ‘Teachers’ exercise book on HIV prevention for teachers’ and assessed the outcomes from the EI ‘World AIDS Day’ Campaign 2007. During the course of the meeting the EFAIDS action plans 2008 for regional affiliates were finalised.
Reflecting EI’s belief in the value of South-South cooperation the three coordinators will now proceed to train colleagues in their respective countries and regions through workshops and in turn strengthen EFAIDS training capacity in Francophone Africa.
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