14th and 15th Days

Hi every one !!

Sorry for the late posts, I've been very busy with the project and with preparing some trips, but I kept you busy with the new pictures I hope !!

On Saturday we had a meeting with our project leader Nhung and some supporters about the "Lead the Change Contest" I've told you about. So now I have some more details for you : There are going to be three phases : We'll have about 120 contestants, and the first phase will be a photography contest on the topic of HIV (they will form groups and have a whole day to take a picture with the letters HIV in it), then we'll post all of the pictures on our facebook fan page and there will be a vote. Then there will be a second and third phase (it's not clear yet what they will be so I'll tell you when I know exactly), and basically the three best contestants will win some scholarships of 300$, 200$ and 100$ - these are sponsored, the money won't be taken by our fundraising !!

Sunday was a bit of a mess because we were supposed to finish our tasks (mainly the preparation of the 2nd version of the workshop - I'll tell you about that later) for Monday, but then Nhung sent us a message telling us to finish them for Sunday before the meeting at 3pm. So we had to cancel our Cultural Meeting with Deaf people for the Mid Autumn Festival where Hieu had invited us (he's learning Vietnamese sign language), which was a pity because he later told us how great it had been !! But well, the project comes first. So we finished all of our tasks on time for the meeting at 3pm (it lasted until 7pm), and after that we just went to bed, exhausted, because Monday would be a special day (you'll see!!).

So now about the workshops: We have currently three versions of the workshop (the first one is either in english with interpreting into vietnamese, or just in vietnamese).

The first version consists of a presentation with a lot of videos and interactive games so that the students wont fall asleep. There are five parts : 1st part is called "What are HIV and AIDS", we talk about some general facts and numbers and about the three stages of HIV and AIDS. 2nd part is called "The spread of HIV" (that's my part), basically I explain how you can get the virus and transmit it. 3rd part is "Prevention", that means how you can protect yourself against HIV (we also do a condom demonstration). 4th part is "Getting tested", and 5th part is "Anti discrimination". Here are some of the videos we are going to show :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaP_2kGPXM0&feature=player_embedded#! (Introduction video about our project)
http://vimeo.com/25499678 (Mr. HIV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyfvBGS9r5M (A video from famous vietnamese singers about HIV and AIDS)

The second version is made by us three interns, it consists of two parts, the first one is a debate (three questions about safe sex, getting tested and anti discrimination, and the students will have to discuss these topics), and the second part is three stories of discrimination in our home countries (the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland) that we'll tell them and some HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns in our countries.

The third version is still being written, but basically it is a lot more interactive, we'll show some videos, we'll dance the AIESEC dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp5an5RMrl4) - we still have to practice that !! - we'll give them some facts about HIV (but shorter than in the 1st version), and at the end we'll perform a play (in vietnamese) about a story with discrimination etc.