SNEP-HIV (National week for HIV prevention education ) – FASMR Romania

Name of the activity: SNEP-HIV (National week for HIV prevention education )

Country/NMO: FASMR Romania

Program: HIV, AIDS and other STIs

Contact information: contact [email protected] to get in touch with the Activity Coordinator

Type of the activity: Continuous Activity

Category: Education

Focus area: Prevention of all STIs or are specific STIs, Removing stigmatization and empowering people living with HIV, STI education or training for future health-care professions, Children living with HIV/AIDS and other STIs

Sustainable Development Goals addressed: SDG 3 (Good health and Well-Being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities)

Problem statement:

Romania’s Current HIV Status is still far from the 90-90-90 goal. Infection prevalence hasn’t seen remarkable modifications compared to European standards, to which one of the contributors is the lack of National Sexual Education Coverage. Our activity tackles the issues of misinformation on HIV and ignorance amongst Romanian youth, while teaching about discrimination against people who live with HIV, methods of prevention and protection and also teaches medical students about HIV.

Target groups:

• Medical students
• Youth

Beneficiaries:

• Medical students
• Youth

Objectives:

At the end of the project, we expect that our beneficiaries will have:

 – gained a basic set of information on HIV infection 

 – learned about the most effective means of HIV Prevention 

 – unlearned some of the most common misconceptions on HIV/AIDS

 – understood the need for ending the stigma against people living with HIV

 – learned about what “Undetectable=Untransmittable” means

 – been familiar with the HIV situation in Romania

 – learned about the importance of a well-made HIV/AIDS action plan in Romania (our country does not currently have one) 

 – gained more awareness about the need to have easy access to PrEP

Indicators of Success:

“Having reached a number of 2800 participants in both editions (1500 in 2020 and 1300 in 2021)

 – Having reached a minimum of 25 participants per webinar, with a maximum of 96 this year and over 125 last year

 – Obtaining a high reach on our Instagram, Facebook and TikTok Posts

 – Establishing a good partnership with our co-organisers and speakers

 – Gathering positive feedback on our webinars

 – Having effective Q&A sessions on our webinars

 – Having a high number of good responses on our quizzes at the end of each webinar

 – Having a high percentage of high school students among our interactors

 – Having a high participation rate on our webinars designated to medical students

Methodology:

Our Educational Week consists mainly in Live Webinars (via Zoom, Facebook Live, Instagram Live) about HIV infection, its transmission means, testing, treatment, destigmatization, life with HIV in Romania, prevention and other topics, each organised by our LCs in collaboration with the NGO Semper Musica (main partner and project founder). After each webinar we organise quizzes, in order to test our participants’ attention, but also the effectiveness of our activities. They will also prepare local awareness projects such as film projections, art contests, partnerships with the local authorities and institutions and Q&As, and with the platform TikTok, short educational videos. 

 Besides this, our project has a section designated to medical students in which we invite professionals from the medical field to talk about HIV/AIDS- related issues. This project already had two successful editions and we plan on organising many more.

Plans for evaluation:

In 2020, a few months before the project we had a complex training with our LORAs and SCORA Volunteers, to cover both the information we need to deliver during the National Week and the means to deliver it. After we established a functional team, the NORA, NORA Assistant and the external partners maintained continuous communication with the LCs, managing the webinar scheduling, making sure all needs are covered and answering all questions, while covering both the pre and the post evaluation. We have recommended each LC to make their post evaluation via Feedback Forms from the webinar participants. In 2021, we had an online training week in which we advised all of our organiser to highly prize their feedback forms and the end of each webinar. We also use the quizzes and the end of the webinars as a means of feedback for the quality and efficiency of our activities. We also individually ask each speaker for their feedback.

External collaborations:

Our main collaborator and cofounder of the project is the NGO Semper Musica a comprehensive sexual and reproductive education association that has helped us from the beginning and provided our pre-program training. We have also partnered with TikTok and our LCs have collaborated with doctors influencers and activists. We also partnered with another 2 Romanian NGOs. Our project was financed by the Mercury Phoenix Trust and GSK and supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Romania