HIV Awareness raising in prisons and communities

In these GlobalGiving reports, we always try to share an exciting story about the impact our program has on prisoners. Sometimes lifes are being impacted by our training and counselling. Sometimes not much special happends, like last visit. We'd like to share a little bit about what a regular training session in prison looks like.

Our staff in Bangkok visits the youthprison in Nakhom Pathom about 2 times a month. Usually we bring 3 of 4 staff to train the youngsters in prison. Many of them have been arrested because of drugs-related crimes. Drugdealing is severely punished in Thailand, but because these boys are younger than 18, they usually get a lower sentence, like 2 or 3 years imprisonment. This week, the group consists of 60 people, all boys, all between 15 and 18 years old.

Ice-breaker
We always start with introducing ourselves. Eventhough these kids all did something illegal, they are all very polite boys and always great us with a smile and a wai (a Thai way of greeting). After the introducting, we always do an icebreaker: a little game to lower the tension. Sometimes we play a game, sometimes we sing a song, but the boys always join enthousiastically. This time we play a Thai version of "Simon says", a little game where the boys have to follow the moves of on of our staff.

What is HIV?
Then the training: in Thailand the highest risk group of getting HIV-infected, are teenagers. They start to become sexually active and often don't have knowledge on safe sex and sexual transmitted diseases. Most school in Thailand don't teach about sex at all; hence a lot of these boys don't know what HIV is. In about 45 minutes, our staff teaches the boys about HIV, condoms, pregnancies and other sex related subjects. Most boys are surprisingly open and often ask questions.

Fight HIV in every possible way
Siam-Care works with people who are touched by HIV/Aids. We guide people in their medication-use, we give job-trainings and give scholarships. But to prevent is better than to cure. So we try to inform as many youngsters as we can, about the risks of unsafe sex. We fight HIV in every possible way and dream of a Thailand which will one day be HIV-free. Because of your support, we can train prisoners and others and protect them. Thank you for making our prison program possible!