Global Conversation

Earlier this week, we all traveled to Edendale for the grand opening of the Whizzkids United Health Academy, the culmination of years of work and planning. As I mentioned, the Health Academy represents the fourth component of the Whizzkids United program, meant to facilitate long-term impact in the fight against HIV/AIDS by providing a range of services and support. The services will all be specially tailored to youth and will include counseling, ARV treatment, HIV and pregnancy testing, family planning, computer courses, a feeding scheme, and other services. Soon, a small turf soccer field will be installed in front of the center so that soccer leagues can be set up. Many kids will learn about the center from their Whizzkids United life skills programs, but the Academy will be open to all youth in the Edendale community. At the opening ceremony, speeches were given by members of Whizzkids, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health (a central partner in the initiative), and the community, including youth who look forward to using the center. There were also a number of performances by a youth choir and several young Zulu dance groups. One of the main Zulu dance moves involves jumping and kicking as high as you can, and it was amazing to see how flexible the young dancers were! It was such a lively celebration, clearly demonstrating the excitement of the community about the launch of this incredible new resource. On Friday, I went with Marcus, the CEO of Whizzkids, to a workshop he was conducting designed for those individuals who will be working and/or volunteering at the Health Academy. Eighteen young people have already offered to volunteer at the center, and the workshop was mostly centered on brainstorming the role of the volunteers. The volunteers chose vuka’yibambe as a name for themselves, which roughly translates from Zulu to “Get up and seize the day”—a name which Marcus found to be perfect except for the fact that he would never be able to remember it (how about vuks for short?). I learned so much by listening to the members of the group discuss all kinds of challenging logistical issues. For instance, the Academy will provide food to orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs), but not those children who are well-fed at home. How can the Academy give out this food to some but not all kids without perpetuating the stigma associated with the OVCs? The group had some great ideas, and it seemed to me that they made a lot of progress at the meeting. Last week, I had a chance to see how Whizzkids United plans to evaluate this newly-launched Health Academy. I joined Tom, the monitoring and evaluations officer of Whizzkids, and two of his partners at one of ten randomly-selected schools (including both primary and secondary schools) where Whizzkids is conducting pre-intervention questionnaires. These anonymous questionnaires ask the students questions about their HIV/AIDS knowledge and views towards infected individuals, as well as personal questions about sexual practices and alcohol/drug use (only for secondary students). The ten schools were chosen for participation in the study because they are all within 5 kilometers of the Health Academy. Whizzkids plans on conducting questionnaires again in about a year with another randomly-selected group of schools. This will help Whizzkids determine whether the children living in the area surrounding the Academy are using and benefiting from its services. It was very interesting to observe the administration of the questionnaires particularly because they are conducted using cell phones! This allows the data to be sent to an outside server as soon as the participants complete the questionnaires. The students were clearly excited to have the chance to use the phones in class. By observing, I also was able to watch how Tom’s M&E partners read and explain each question (in Zulu). The questionnaires took about 1 hour to complete, with generally one minute devoted to each question. All of my observations will help me as I plan with streetfootballworld the administration of our own questionnaires at the festival. Here is an article about the opening of the Health Academy: http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/social_development/africaid_opens_health_academy_for_kzn_teens.html