It was not a particularly cold morning. I walked over to the German Embassy to hand in the package for my VISA application for a short studying vacation in Germany. Soon inside the VISA office, I found the place crowded with fellow Chinese citizens waiting for their interviews. Most were young students, some dressed in expensive business suits, and a few older couples, maybe to join their sons and daughters overseas for the coming holidays.

I waited about half an hour before my number was called on the plasma screen. And a young looking Chinese VISA officer waived me to her window.

Soon her question was directed to my work at PTE. And one special question aroused my greatest interests and had me thinking all the way back to the office. Upon finishing listening to my answer to what exactly we did at PTE with 2 full-time staff and one intern, she commented, all the work you did, with university red cross and district CDC, the online advocacy, counseling and film, weren’t these all for young intelligent people, who have the source to look up information and avert HIV AIDS? Why didn’t you focus on people living in rural areas?

At the time, I only introduced to her our involvement with local charities near Beijing, to the extent our limited resource would allow for. And that got carried away to a discussion about Christianity in China. But what I really wished I had told her was that, the reason HIV AIDS has become such a big threat here, is that everyone is of the equal exposure without proper protection. In the cases we heard and saw, young educated Chinese people were no better than people from rural areas to protect themselves against the threat of HIV. Young people’s sexual experiment and risky behaviors put them in even greater danger than those from rural areas.

And that lead to another thing I wish I had told the visa officer. The work we do at PTE, is not only to tell people, esp. young students to have safe sex or no sex, but rather more importantly, we want to tell them the vast HIV population living in China’s rural area was produced by something historically extremely unfortunate, exceeding anyone’s premonition. These victims of the virus should not also be the victims of the discrimination associated, which is only worsened by stereotyping their poverty and peasant status.

I also wanted to tell the VISA officer that today sex transmission is the number 1 method of transmission of the virus in China. Lots of young people, even students in universities and middle schools have fallen prey to the virus. China’s economic uprising, young people’s newly found sense of freedom and even boldness are not matched by our education system or social attitudes toward various new phenomena.  And PTE has to serve as a small but steady voice to continually broadcast the seemingly obvious yet hard-to-cut-through messages on HIV in China.

It is not possible to tell who carries the virus. But for those we do know live in tough situations because of the virus, let’s show a little more respect to the fights they are putting on. And let’s help whatever we can to make their struggle just a tiny bit easier. And for young people, let us hope some of PTE’s creative campaigns would reach and find those who share our concern and can join our efforts, and help those who haven’t yet been aware of the danger of their sexual audacity.

Well, guess you have to come and check it out yourself before you know what we are doing there. One thing is for sure. It costs you nothing. And you may bring back something other than knowledge about AIDS.

Also, remember, if you have questions about HIV/AIDS, log onto our HIVZX.com

With the tireless efforts and many sleepless nights of editing, Qi and Zheng, both undergraduate students from Tsinghua Art Academy, leading their school mates and PTE’s volunteers, produced this short drama, based on a story written by PTE’s Minhoo.

It’s a fresh attempt to catch eyes of China’s young people to contemplate on the growing impact of this imported virus on today’s young generation. The film is also chosen by university level Red Cross to assist their training of Peer Education facilitators from all major Beijing universities.

They love internet. They communicate more with text-messaging than in real life. They are most interested in subjects about romance and love psychology. They are not ashamed to talk about sex. Whether or not they know exactly what they say, this is a dynamic group of students who would step out into the real world very soon.

It is PTE’s task to tell them how to foster healthy life styles, and how to protect against sexual assault and other kinds of unseeable attacks from STDs and HIV.

A journalist from China’s foremost English Newspaper. An auditor from ‘big four’ accounting firm. An intelligent software programer. A trilingual translator and social enterprise entrepreneur. A senior manager of corporate culture. A talented textile engineer. None has exactly overlapping areas over than the district they live and work at. And it was the spirit of volunteerism and sense of duty of social responsibility that brought this group of energetic young people to PTE.

Right after the Spring Festival, the 10 week long Teacher Training Program started at PTE’s rented conference room one afternoon every week. With extensive reading materials and intensive preparation at home,  in the 3 hour training session, every future teacher has to take turns to stand in front of the rest to experience the humiliation of making mistakes, to overcome the stage fright and sufferings from embarrassing moments, and finally to enjoy the feeling of being a successful teacher capable of handling different subjects and audience.

It was one thing to learn from books/training camps; it was completely, well, a disaster to step into a migrant school classroom the first time thinking it couldn’t be very different from the rehearsals and too ‘bad’ an experience. For Wang Ying and a couple other volunteer teachers, they knew better to take the teaching with the imagined ease any longer after the first encounter. After that 40min session, they would still stubbornly praise the kids for their ’smartness and enthusiasm’. But the coarse, even slightly swollen throats gave out the true message that these children have to be tamed before they would listen and actually learn anything in class.

In the following weeks, volunteer teachers and PTE staffers would redesign classes

and try different methods to grab their attentions and teach them how to effectively washing hands or what are the three transmission methods for HIV before losing them to each other’s shouting competition. From 5 students to over 20, each week, we are catching more students and helping them to change wrong notions about bacteria and disease or knowingly rectifying a bad hobby.

With real experience from classrooms and training received in workshops, our volunteer teachers would turn to be the toughest or even the best for the most often neglected subject that is Health education among chinese schools.

Starting at the end of March, every Thursday and Friday afternoons, PTE staffers along with a few PTE volunteers travel to Dongba at Chaoyang and Pingxiwangfu at Changping District respectively, to teach 2 classes of 11-14 year-olds about general health issues and HIV prevention. As an effort to reach young migrant children and teach them not only about the threats of epidemics largely concerning the adult migrant workers in China like HIV, PTE’s staffers designed and upgraded previous contents so that the 12-week classes also cover topics on general health issues such as nutrition and personal hygiene.

As always, the students are lovely. And of course, very wild… To better sustain order in class and help overcome their short attention span in the last class of the day, Xiaoyi and volunteer Wang Ying came up with an adapted version of the theme song from the popular Chinese cartoon ‘Pleasant Sheep, Big Bad Wolf’. With lyrics adroitly changed to information about HIV prevention, children had a good time and learned well.

These Health Classes taught at both locations received help from our NGO partner Compassion for Migrant Children and many dedicated university student volunteers. It takes volunteers and us at least 3 hours on the road to go to and come back from these locations to teach.

Migrant schools in Beijing are being moved out of the urban area and relocated to the outskirts of Beijing, as villages inside city, where these migrant schools are usually located, and where tens of thousands of migrant population could build or rent houses and stay for long, are being evacuated and bulldozed to make space for future residential and commercial buildings.

Mainly because of the relocation, it’s getting more difficult for NGOs and volunteer organizations to stay in touch with migrant schools and communities to give consistent help. And every year, PTE along with other NGOs has to go farther away to search for classes to teach. “Wherever they go, I will go.” says PTE staffer Xiaoyi.

2 students got full mark on a general health quiz

PTE volunteer Chris talking about the impact of HIV epidemic outside China

Red Wing projects is one of the best HIV/AIDS education projects organized by any student organization in China we’ve participated or observed. Every year since 2008, HIV/AIDS prevention being the main focus of the project,  international Aiesecers as well as local Chinese members come together to study knowledge of HIV/AIDS and learn about teaching skills from PTE’s TTT workshops and then take specially designed curriculum to a dozen migrant schools scattered on the outskirts of Beijing. This year, their schools are also located in a few other big cities such as Shanghai.

Since 2005, PTE has been working with migrant schools and volunteers from universities to teach HIV/AIDS prevention courses to migrant children from grade 6 and above. Our intention is to help teach these children knowledge about and prevention against AIDS since many of them would get jobs immediately after 9-year commendatory education. And our course often serves as the only chance to tell them about HIV/AIDS, prevention and anti-discrimination.

Volunteers from AIESEC’s red wing projects are often career-driven and highly motivated students or newly graduates with a healthy dose of initiative. In the 2 consecutive years we’ve trained and taught them about HIV/AIDS and how to teach, they constantly impressed us with novel ideas and dedication to the program. After a week-long training, many among them are well prepared and ready. This year’s Red Wing project is expected to reach over 2000 children.

Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. The World AIDS Day theme for 2009 is ‘Universal Access and Human Rights’. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.

According to the latest statistics published by China Ministry of Health, there are now about 740,000 people living with HIV in this country, among whom, 105,000 have AIDS. The new infections in 2009 are estimated to be 48,000. The epidemic currently spreads showing 4 characteristics: 1. the newly infection rates are further slowed in line with the effects of extensive measures taken to prevent and treat the disease; 2. Sex has remained the most common way of transmission, while infection cases among MSM (men having sex with men) groups steadily rise up; 3. Infection rate is generally low across the country but high in certain areas; 4. nationwide more people are under the impact of HIV, ways the virus spreads more diversified than before.

Low awareness of the existence and reality about HIV/AIDS situation in China, which although has shown some improvement thanks to educational efforts from government agencies and non-profit sectors, remains, and nullifies efforts to provide easily accessible testing and fre

e medication. The most important issue concerning people living with HIV, also affecting how general population prevent against HIV/AIDS, is the extensive discrimination and stigma associated with the disease.

Nearly 24 years has passed since China’s first case of HIV/AIDS infection. HIV/AIDS has caused many and an still increasing number of people, especially young ones under the age of 25, to suffer. Universal access to education, to testand to treatment are all necessary for fighting against this virus before it could be scientifically annihilated.

]]> http://www.pte-china.org/pte-news/22nd-world-aids-day-universal-access-and-human-rights/feed/ 0 http://www.pte-china.org/pte-news/chaoping-project-concluded/ http://www.pte-china.org/pte-news/chaoping-project-concluded/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:23:18 +0000 carl.wang http://www.pte-china.org/?p=911 Taking bus rides for about 2 hours on Wednesday afternoons, walking past rows of shabby houses and through thick veils of sand stirred up from piles scattered along sides of the road, volunteer teachers from a Beijing-based university would finally get to Xin Long (meaning New Dragon in Chinese) migrant school in Chaoping district to bring one session of HIV/AIDS prevention and health education class to students from Grade 6 to 8. Within 2 months, they played games, led exercises, and tried their best teaching methods, all in an effort to provide these young students with knowledge to stay healthy.

By no means were those students, seemingly lovely and tame at the first glance, lovely and tame in the starting sessions. Excited by the energy and roll-play games our volunteer teachers brought into the classroom, they reacted with all their enthusiasm, sometimes even, ‘wildness’.

But our volunteers teachers, though astounded by the response they got for the starting session and struggled to present the class loud enough to overcome the hoorays, instead of feeling feeling defeated, they actively participated in discussion sessions with each other, listed and practiced all tips or skills that could help them regain the control in the class. They cared so much about those children they finally realized they need not be their friends, they had to assume the authority of teachers.

In the following weeks, teachers had the best experience of volunteer work. They noticed students following their instructions, thinking about questions and playing hard when asked to. It became easy to let them know the difference between HIV and AIDS, and to watch out for their health.

The project concluded last week. Volunteer teachers hope they could return next semester.

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