Ei-iE

In early December a number of meetings took place on Education for All and HIV/AIDS in Nairobi. UN-agencies, the World Bank, NGOs, trade unions and bilateral donors convened under the umbrella of the Inter-Agency Task Team on Education and HIV/AIDS. Likewise thirteen EFAIDS coordinators from Eastern and Southern Africa and Ghana met to bring the programme a logical step forward.

The Inter Agency Task Team on Education and HIV and AIDS organised a symposium under the heading “The missing ten percent”. This percentage refers to those children who still do not have access to primary education in Sub Saharan Africa. However, in its contribution to the symposium, EI emphasised that even more shockingly, 41% of all children in Sub Sahara Africa do not complete primary education, and only 30% complete Basic Education (defined as primary school plus 2 to 3 years of junior secondary school). Therefore governments and stakeholders need to strive much harder to achieve the target of 100% completion of basic education, the second Millennium Development Goal set in 2000.

Another meeting in Nairobi saw the World Bank convening 34 HIV focal points from Ministries of Education from East, Central and West Africa. One of the key topics on the agenda was the greater participation of teachers living with HIV and AIDS in the education response. EI was invited to take part in this meeting and was given the opportunity to take the floor to express the educators´ view. The 16 teacher unions present demonstrated their commitment to the greater involvement of teachers living with HIV and AIDS by describing all of the steps they have taken in the last year since the UNESCO-EI Consultation of December 2006. Some of the unions, notably UNATU/Uganda and KNUT/Kenya, have built a permanent working relationship with groups of HIV positive teachers. Government representatives expressed their high regard for the many initiatives taken by the unions.

Finally thirteen EFAIDS coordinators from Eastern and Southern Africa and from Ghana met over an intensive five-day period to plan for 2008 and to receive training on two new EI/EDC toolkits. To date the material used to inspire EFAIDS training has focused on the Teachers’ Exercise Book for HIV Prevention. This training will now be consolidated and furthered by bringing in two key issues for teachers and their unions, namely, gender equity and the greater involvement of people living with HIV and AIDS. The toolkit produced to address gender ‘Building a Gender-Friendly School Environment’ specifically aims to help teacher unions to create a healthy, safe environment in schools for learners of all ages. Secondly, ‘Inclusion is the Answer: Unions Involving and Supporting Educators living with HIV’ acts as a support to unions in reaching out to groups of People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA). Training on these materials has started in the Caribbean and in Africa and will also take place in Asia and Latin America in 2008.

At the closure of the five-day workshop, EI President Thulas Nxesi addressed the participants, stating that he is “passionate about this programme” since it is exemplary on a number of new initiatives. “The EFAIDS Programme is capable of building bridges and promoting initiatives amongst a range of issues related to EFA and HIV”, he said. For more information, please contact us at [email protected].