The Teens Against AIDS group was formally started up by Che Nadison and was lead by Mr. Rendel – who unfortunately is no longer with us anymore. The group is now managed by Motsei Tamocha and is focussing on looking for original more effective ways of getting the message of HIV/AIDS across and educating people that may not be familiar with the virus and how it works. The group first educates and familiarises itself with what HIV/AIDS is, how it’s contracted, how it works, treatment, prevention, and so forth as well as the background aspects for example how peer pressure can force someone into making the wrong choice and resulting in the contraction of the virus. Over the few years that the group has been running we have visited many schools, presenting a workshop aimed mainly at the grades 8 to 10 – a strategy based on research done that shows that increasingly younger people are contracting the virus from having unprotected sex. The workshops appeared to be effective and showed some very good results from questionnaires that we would hand to the kids prior to the start of the workshop. Towards the end of last year we tried to make a DVD that basically incorporated all the knowledge and information we had which ended up making it long, ineffective and boring. As a result this year we have made and completed a number of shorter DVDs, each dealing with a different aspect and moving more into the day to day activities and linking them with the messages we are trying to get across, thus hopefully presenting an interesting angle with which to look at HIV/AIDS. The DVDs are aimed again to educate the lower grades but also a little towards the higher grades as well. The DVDs are also focused mainly for less fortunate schools that do not hear enough about HIV/AIDS. We have discovered that more privileged schools are receiving the message but it is unfortunately not making much of an impact. The group is working to find ways to better and more effectively deliver the message in such cases.

Throughout the few years TAA has had some ups and downs mainly regarding and influenced by the number of members in the group. The group started off with predominantly students from the older grades but has pleasingly developed into a more dynamic younger group consisting of grade 10s and two grade 12s. We are now at a healthy membership of 10 members consisting of Brendan, Sisitha, Thato, Anelisa, Ruru, Andisiwe, Motsei, Kevin, Abigail, and Falco. The group has been working hard together and looks forward to a successful year.