BNTU SPONSORS HIV/AIDS WORKSHOP

January 04, 2007

A three-day workshop on HIV/AIDS is nearing completion in Belize City. The event is sponsored by the Belize National Teachers Union and has in attendance over twenty teachers from its branches. B-N-T-U President Anthony Fuentes says this week’s workshop is the first of many to come.

Anthony Fuentes: B-N-T-U President

“This three day workshop, BNTU is an affiliate of Education International EI. EI will be providing funding of three thousand Euros over the next five years to all its affiliates so that we can train teachers so that they can be equipped in order for us to help to prevent HIV and AIDS it’s in our country and we are targeting all schools in Belize.”

One of the participants we spoke to said teachers appreciate the power they have to help make a difference.

Participant:

“They have thought us all different things about the disease, the differences between the HIV and the AIDS how it has been developing in our country the effects it will have in our economy and the effects it will have over the next five years.”

Lenny Ayuso:Love TV

“ Can you tell us how do you plan to incorporate what you are learning when you go back to school?”

 Participant:

“Working on different scenarios giving them the different information and based on how our country is being affected with this virus and the different things we can do to prevent it from being spread more.”

Gwendolyn Monima and Zeni Lopez are the Coordinators of the workshop and they say the idea is to help the teachers to help not only themselves, but their colleagues and students as well.

Gwendolyn Monima and Zeni Lopez: Coordinators

“As teachers we are overwhelmed with the amount of children we teach and the lives we touch. And so we are the people who reach out to many people and as teachers we can help many people to change their behaviour. So this workshop that we are doing today is to train master trainers who will go out into their branches. We have ten union branches and they are going to train the school reps in their branches, the school reps in turn will go out an train the staff members then the staff members will have this information that they will use with the children. So you see it starts from a small group and it spreads out to a wider group. What we plan to get out of this workshop is to be able to provide the skills to these master trainers and the facts the information and then everything that falls under the HIV/AIDS umbrella for example basic facts, modes of transmission, voluntary testing, stigma and discrimination, confidentiality all of these are shop topics that are under the HIV/AIDS umbrella that they will be getting information about.”

Another B-N-T-U Training session on HIV/AIDS is planned for August of this year. At that time, organizers say they hope to train over a hundred persons.

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