Yunting Dai

Strategy:

Leona Dai is a student at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai which, despite a booming economy, is struggling to contain the HIV/AIDS epidemic among its large migrant population. HIV/AIDS is the most serious health problem facing the world today and in China a combination of cultural taboos, political constraints and a lack of sex education in schools make young people particularly vulnerable.

The youth in Leona’s community lacks sex education. Because of traditional taboos people are not comfortable to talk openly about these issues in schools and families. There is no communication platform for young boys and girls. A majority of young people show discrimination towards PLWA. Lots of them are undertaking unsafe sex resulting in unexpected pregnancies and AIDS.

Thus Leona is also battling to change the atmosphere of discrimination that exists among her university peers towards people living with HIV/AIDS. She believes that raising awareness among the young and well-educated is crucial to changing attitudes in a deeply traditional society. “University students are the pillars of society and the future of China”.

Leona’s Action Plan is to provide youth within the community with appropriate life-skills training in peer education sessions in cooperation with Shanghai Family Planning Association. The session address issues such as adolescent health, reproductive health and contraception, prevention of STDs, HIV/AIDS, attitude changes, sexuality, future plans and values etc.The target group are college students but Leona planned to promote the campaign into the greater community.

Leona is president of HAIKEYI, an on-campus grassroots organisation, which aims to increase the level of awareness about HIV/AIDS among students and the local community. For Leona, OIYP2004 represents a chance to develop her own leadership skills and learn new ideas and practical measures to inform and protect the most vulnerable members of society.

She also planned to create a platform where youth can share ideas and work together for social change and to raise awareness in order to change the behaviours and attitudes of youth. An International Youth Educators Forum aims to provide an avenue for youth educators to network with fellow youth educators, access information about educational practices, and share actions, ideas, materials, and pedagogic tools. Furthermore, this forum will provide new insights and reflections about varied methodologies, and their implications for different cultural settings.

Past Accomplishments & Skills:

Leona just finished her University degree. She is the founding president of the grass-roots organisation HAIKEY (Health and AIDS Initiative for the Knowledge and Education on Youth Involvement). She carried out several peer education programs and has skills in organisational management, project management, networking and advocacy.

Implementation:

Leona expected difficulties in getting youth involved and support from other organisation, especially governmental institutions. However, her organisation made a lot of progress and she could implement her Action Plan with great success.

Recently her organisation conducted a second peer education training session. Even though it is not that easy to gather young people for peer education, Leona and her organization could successfully increase the number of participants every year. Moreover, they could get other many other Universities involved in the program and they could successfully extend their network. HAIKEYI is still cooperating with Shanghai Family planning Association and other local organizations as well as some governmental departments.

They are active on campus and in the communities handing out condoms and providing peer education sessions for floating populations. Many very young workers have to travel between Shanghai and other cities to get to their workplaces. For 1^st December they plan to organize a Round Table/Forum on HIV/AIDS on peer education issues.

In terms of evaluating the project the team could get a PhD student to train their students in M&E. The questionnaires used after every peer education sessions have been developed and the team uses specific evaluation software now. In terms of the role of young people in particular, Leona thinks that a lot of young people and especially students focus on their own future. Life in Shanghai is very competitive and young people want to improve their own capacities, quickly finish their degree, gain work experience etc. Works loads are heavy and a lot of students don’t have much spare time. It is not easy to bring people together for peer education programs. Lots of them think they already know enough about the issues. Leona experiences that a lot of success depends on good promotion work.

Update

Leona graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2005 and had an voluntary work opportunity with MinHang Family Planning Association that closely works with General Secetary Ms. Zheng and HAIKEYI as well as other university volunteers and lecturers. Although she graduated, HAIKEYI has been taken up by the fifth president Mr. Shenyu Xu now and develops well both for the on-campus training and network with different groups and outreaches in the community as they did before.

In March, 2006, HAIKEYI led the third round "Train the Trainers" session with Minhang Family Planning Association and got very successful too. Last December, they also brought Jay Fridman from US to the campus to give us a talk on how to handle a peer education session. Community education sessions especially for migrant groups are introduced by HAIKEYI trainers too.

During the past experience, the local governmental organization, SFPA and MFPA did help a lot. HAIKEYI is continuing to develop and design some new workshops too.

"After several years experience with NGO, I wish I would be able to make the social service and plant science more closely as my study and career goes on. I will be going to University in US to complete my Master's education in the field of Plant Breeding for the next three years."