Breaking the Silence

5 November 2007

Compared to other Asian countries Sri Lanka ranks low on the number of people afflicted with HIV/AIDS.  This has created an attitude of complacency and silence amongst communities, especially Christians. This is a very dangerous situation since HIV/AIDS does not respect religion, region, language or culture.  Further, the increasing number of IDPs, security zones and poverty pose a definite threat to an epidemic proportioned outbreak. 

Taking all these facts into consideration, a three day seminar was organized by ADT and FIDA Partners’ (a Finnish agency that partners ADT in Sri Lanka) in June ’07. The seminar was aimed at ‘breaking the silence’ amongst the Christian Faith Communities. Apart form creating awareness, we also intended to address the basics on test / care / treatment aspects of HIV/AIDS etc. Brochures were prepared in all three languages and sent to all the Churches, Christian schools and Institutions. We aimed at reaching Church pastors/leaders, Sunday school teachers, Senior Schooling students of SCMs (Student Christian Movements) and students of Theological Institutions.  Since schools were in session we could not reach the senior students. All the other groups were reached in varying numbers. 

The conference was held at Berjaya Mount Royal Beach Hotel in Sri Lanka from Nov 5^th to the 7^th. There were 106 residential participants excepting representatives from Jaffna and Trinco. Hannu O Happonen was the main facilitator who was the HIV & AIDS advisor of FIDA and works in Kampala, Uganda. He mainly works amongst the PLWHA (People Living with HIV/AIDS). All sessions had parallel translations done in Sinhalese and Tamil. There were other local facilitators who handled group discussions and workshops in between the main sessions. Though 13 main sessions were planned to be covered during the 3 days, we could only cover 9 sessions due to a technical problem with the sound systems.   

Hannu’s presentations were very clear, and simple but also contained serious content.  We believe everyone received it very well. From the feedbacks received  all those who attended the seminar testified that the sessions were very useful. On the last day, almost all participants claimed they had learnt more than 50 % of something new. Each participant received a hand out of the sessions, and a DVD of Hannu’s presentations (including the presentation on Marginalization). Hannu also gave the participants a CD full of relevant books on HIV/AIDS.  

One of the special features of this conference was accommodating five ‘differently abled’ (deaf and dumb) people in the conference. “This was the first time we were included in a conference of this nature” signaled one of them in sign language which was interpreted. They could all follow English very well and Hannu’s views on the power point presentations helped them immensely. 

All the participants who took part in the entire program were awarded certificates of participation. We also had one woman PLWHA come and share her story which touched the hearts of many. The group sessions were very interactive and most often time was a limitation. Each night after dinner an optional session of video presentations were held on the titles “reason to live” and “measure of love”. It was encouraging to see nearly 75% of the participants  attend these sessions.  

On the whole we were happy for having “broken the silence”, as well as having created some positive responses too. On December 01, those who participated at the seminar commemorated the World AIDS day in their respective regions and churches with meaningful events. For instance, our Southern delegates, decided to reach the inmates of Boosa Prison with a HIV/AIDS awareness program. With the support of ADT, they distributed printed towels to the inmates. The text on the towel which was written in Sinhala and Tamil was “let us love life; let us eradicate AIDS.  

The organizing committee for this program has been meeting frequently to review the program as well as to draw  a follow up program. We plan to hold three seminars in the next year, one focusing on awareness, one on treatment and one on pastoral care.