It started on the 26th of May with the roundtable of practitioners “Ways of Multi-Sectoral Cooperation towards HIV/AIDS Prevention at Local Level”. Among more than 80 participants there were officials from respective departments of the city council/executive committee, representatives of NGOs, NV center of social services for youth, members of the local Coordination Council on fighting and prevention of HIV/AIDS, local volunteers, and representatives of all other interested partner organizations.
The discussions during the roundtable were concentrated at 3 major topics:
1. Overview about the history of HIV/AIDS epidemic and current situation with HIV/AIDS in Ukraine and in the city. Lack of contacts with all-Ukrainian and international HIV/AIDS service organizations and donor agencies was identified as one of the biggest problems.
2. Overview about the methods of treatment: medical aspects of HIV/AIDS response. Main ways of HIV transmission, methods of treatment, and main tasks in effective response to HIV/AIDS were discussed.
3. Interactive game with the purpose to identify major local problems in HIV/AIDS response in Novohrad-Volynskyy and to plan future course of actions. The participants of the roundtable brainstormed in specialised groups (“schools”, “media”, “medicine”, “culture and sport”, “NGOs”, “government”, “social services”) the most suitable prevention activities.
The results of this work will be presented to municipal authorities specifying the needs for fighting HIV/AIDS at local level. All stakeholders committed themselves for future multi-sectoral cooperation on HIV/AIDS awareness activities.
The main objective of the public festival “Together against HIV/AIDS” organised on the 27th of May was to fight lack of awareness as one of the major reasons of spreading the infection and increase the number of citizens aware of HIV/AIDS. The festival included such activities as sports competition, dissemination of brochures and leaflets, and inter-rayon event “Race for Life” which involved about 2000 citizens of Novohrad-Volynskyy municipality and the neighbouring rayons (Baranivskyy, Yemilchynskyy, Olevskyy). The race started at 11.00 on the central square of the city and finished on the main sport stadium where speeches, sport activities for kids and wide dissemination of informational materials took place for the rest of the day.
During the concert of local music groups and performances of local theatres several hundreds of citizens were informed about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and were provided with leaflets, brochures, T-shirts and other printed materials which were disseminated by the volunteers of local NGOs.
“Such festivals are something new, but very positive for our youth and all other citizens. Good results of our work become visible when we see such a big number of people attending this event. Let it be the first, but not the last successful step in our joint efforts to fight against HIV/AIDS epidemic in our city”, said Mr. M. Borovets, City Mayor.
