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Participants attending  the program (Photo: Teko Folli/US Embassy)

Youth Leaders and Students Learn about how to Avoid HIV/AIDS

About hundred youth leaders and students learned about how the HIV/AIDS is transmitted and how it can be prevented, as the American Embassy took again its film show to Abengourou in eastern Côte d’Ivoire.

The AIDS Roadshow was organized on September 20, 2007 in connection with the week-long program dubbed: “America Days”, an American Embassy’s initiative that allows the embassy to reach out to Ivorians living outside of Abidjan.

The program was co-hosted by REPMASCI, a Network of Ivoirian Artists and Journalists Against AIDS. The session included a series of short videos on AIDS – made by Africans for Africans and in French – for youth leaders and students on the situations and dangers young people encounter.

The program closed with a hot debate led by local health authorities and REPMASCI’s leaders each exhorting the audience to heed the program’s message. They also stressed the importance of the youths, and students in particular, to take part in the campaign against AIDS. Speaking after the program, some participants said: “We were re-energized in the fight.” They also pledged to adopt good behavior as “the only to avoid the disease.”