HIV Awareness raising in prisons and communities

Siam-Care often welcomes volunteers. Lisanne van Hasselaar is one of them. She joined us on several prison visits and wanted to share her experiences. This is her story

I found myself lucky to join the female staff of Siam-Care to the woman prison. We went there to train and educate a group of prisoners about HIV. And I was amazed by what I saw here. So I would like to share this with you.

It was a large group with various women. One young, the other old, some very womanly and the other boyish. At first some of them were a little reserved, but after a game they warmed up. Then, we started singing. And I have never seen a group of woman singing so loud, with so much power and with so much joy. All the women where clapping, laughing and singing. For them it was a moment of happiness, with no thinking about their situation. 

After breaking the ice, the staff started with a pre-test and started explaining about the spread of HIV. And they did it in an amazing and interactive way. With little cups of water and a syringe. One of the woman had ‘infected water’ and the others were clean. All the woman had to take a little bit of water of their own cup and put it into another cup. This represented having sexual intercourse. They did this several times and in the end we had to test the water. In the end, half of the group had infected water. It was a fun and effective way of explaining about the spread of HIV.

This way, the woman had a fun activity and they learned something. By participating in this training they had to pay attention and they will remember the message better. In the coming weeks the staff will come back to do more of these trainings. And at the end they will do a post-test, so we will know if the trainings are effective. I really think the staff does a great job with the woman in this prison.

In 2019 Siam-Care conducted 48 training sessions in 7 different prisons. For every kind of prison there is a different approach. It is a lot of work, but the results are good. So they keep on doing this great work.