Ei-iE

Education International (EI), Education Development Centre (EDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are pleased to announce the release of their new toolkit ‘Leadership in the HIV and AIDS response: A toolkit for teachers’ unions to promote health and improve education’.

This kit has been developed in the framework of the EI/EDC/WHO EFAIDS programme to help unions, their members, and teachers around the world protect themselves and their colleagues from HIV infection, and take effective leadership for HIV and AIDS and health education in schools.

The toolkit builds on the experience of EI in its HIV and AIDS programmes, which has since developed into the EFAIDS programme, through which unions have trained tens of thousands teachers in more than 40 countries using the Teachers’ Exercise Book for HIV Prevention.

This kit is based on the five EFAIDS working areas – research, policy development, advocacy, training and publicity - and provides information, tools, and activities to help unions take action and develop institutional skills in each area. It proposes an engaging teaching approach that aims to help people learn to make the right health-related choices rather than mainly focusing on preventing infection and disease. The method used is based on the life skills and participatory approaches to teaching about health issues.

While this toolkit is designed specifically for use by union leaders and for training of teachers and adults, another, different, toolkit is currently being finalised and will be conceived for teachers to lead classroom activities with their students. It will aim to help teachers teach young people to build the skills needed to protect themselves from HIV.

Because HIV and AIDS is a workplace issue, teachers’ unions have a responsibility to protect their members, fellow colleagues and students. They have the capacity to reach out to local communities and take the lead on HIV and AIDS to make a difference.

The kit will be a central EFAIDS piece used by more than 80 teacher unions and their members taking part in the EFAIDS programme in 46 countries around the world.