Conference HIGHWAY to HIV/AIDS Awareness >Report Wanted!

[Guest guest]

Dear Participants of the ´Highway´, as time is passing and the sounds of the ´highway´ are gradually subsiding, hopefully, the main melody and ground rhythms of it, are still resounding vivdly in our memories, though. Just a few days ago I received letters from both Pascal,

Burundi, and a little earlier from Nelly, Kenya, reminding me of the importance to finally issue a General Report of the Conference. Thank you! Here the reason for the delay: Before publishing such a report, we should first do a sort of evaluation. Due to our limited time at Marangu (tight schedule) and the unprecedented and overshadowing happenings of our last day, Sunday 8th Feb

2006, the planned Evaluation that afternoon actually never took place. Also, unfortunately, some of the most active conference attendees who actually had contributed extensively with their knowledge and personal experience were not present that afternoon since they had to leave earlier for other home activities. Consequently, they did not get the opportunity to share their views and insights and give us their feedback to fit into the overall picture of our common experience. That is why I want to invite everybody once more to reflect upon our being together for almost one week, 8 to 12th Feb 2006, especially on the single topics and their special aspects, in order to be able to finalize a report in a more (than less) comprehensive and sensible way. So far all information on the conference CONTENT remain very general and superficial. Obviously, some participants exclusively used the last day to focus on their personal concerns and interests , ignoring the essentials of the conference with ideas of money riding their mind and thus blinded, corrupted any form of meaningful dialogue and evaluation. I myself left the conference early that Sunday for the above mentioned reasons. Now, to the Evaluation. Tell me if I am wrong : What was the actual content and meaning of this conference? Certainly not 5 ***** Star Hotels, recreational lounges, sitting allowances or Coca Cola prices! What was the main message and important lessons learned from the single topics? What about the inner meaning of our discussions, the importance of our personal intentions and motivations, our socio-cultural and spiritual values or barriers when dealing with HIV'AIDS? What about the outer realities of scientific approaches often conflicting with the inner dimensions? The way people come together in (peer) groups, organisations and institutions and its meaning and implications? Remeber the four quadrants (CONFERENCE MAP) being introduced the first day to serve us as an integral tool to navigate, structurize and simplify the often complex nature of HIVªAids in different contexts and not to get confused when exploring the different dimensions of the disease from bio-medical to social to cultural to psychological to spiritual. ============================================== THE EVALUATION Therefore, I want to invite you to look again into the INTERIOR of the conference (and the depth of you minds and hearts!) and consider the different topics and contributions. A well-known instrument for this is the ´SWOT´ ( examining Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) - an easy analytical (scientific) tool to evaluate conditions, structures, states of developement etc. Please, consider THE SINGLE TOPICS AND CONTRIBUTIONS further BELOW and apply the following categories of questions: Strenths - Which were the strong point of the topic? What was useful for me? What did I like? What was new? Weaknesses - Which were the weak points? What was not important for me? What did I dislike? Opportunities - Future

opportunities? What can be done better, in a different way? Threats - which points were not useful at all? even being contraproductive, threatening future development or dialogue - ? February 8- Wednesday 1. The Conference Chair 2. The Conference Map 3.

HIV/AIDS & sexuality 4. Leadership & peer education February 9- Thursday 1. Epidemiology 2.

Culture & environment 3. ABC/ Vulnerability/ Stigma/ PLWHA 4. Social change- Oxfam 5. Condom ( Male & Female) February 10- Friday 1. Psychology/ Religion 2.

HIV/AIDS Youth at Kilimanjaro 3. Kinukamori Reforestation/ Chagga Culture February 11-

Saturday 1. Community sensitization- Market square 2. Community empowerment 3. Disco February 12- Sunday 1. Poverty 2. Wrap up

issues General 1. Warming up 2. Artistic performances/ Other e.g. Video Burundi, Video Watu Wa Watu Conference Approaches 1. Grassroots 2. Participatory and interactive

approaches 3. Organization ============================================ To avoid further misunderstandings, there were never any plans of engaging a secretary for recording outcomes or voices of the conference in a collected fashion. Rather, our minds and hearts were meant to keep the treasures, lessons and challenges and to express them personally, voluntarily - in a participatory fashion as arts or facts, as memory, on paper (treasure-, question-, waste box) or otherwise (record it on video, photo etc), in order to share it later with everybody else as integral parts of an evolving mosaic - the whole of our common experience!

(again reflecting participation and inter-action which I personally understand as an integral and vital basis for any learning or teaching process and which applies for any level of understanding being communicated - and -communication itself!) Please send your comments and evaluation results to pascal_nepa (DOT) fr , nellynjega@... and cc to info@... THank you all for you participation! Light'Nature! Roland E. Futterer MAAA Mankind Aids Arts Awareness Augsburgerstr. 21 10789 Berlin , Germany www.maaango.org

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