Country/region: Cambodia
Project focus
During 2002 SCUK started working with Buddhist monks on an advocacy programme to mobilise faith-based communities in the fight against HIV related stigma and discrimination. The project consisted of a series of three planning sessions, followed by four intensive training workshops for monks and people with HIV/AIDS. The project also produced a training kit in a traditional monk’s bag for monks to use in their communities.
Background
The rationale for this approach is that monks are respected members of communities and in many communities pagodas are focal points of community activity. Monks can be very influential especially with community leaders and those in positions of local power. People tend to listen to what monks have to say on subjects and pay attention to what monks actually do and thus are more likely to change their views and actions as they model the monks’ behaviour.
One of the major tenets of Buddhism is compassion, it is fundamental to the practice of the religion and the philosophy. Monks can be powerful advocates for compassion towards those with HIV and the children of families with HIV and orphans of AIDS; monks can advocate for community support for these people. Monks through their teaching can discuss the threats that HIV represents to individuals and communities. As monks come to understand HIV/AIDS and the transmission of HIV they can advocate for an end to stigma and discrimination which in part stems from fear and poor understanding of HIV and the social causes of transmission.
Through counselling and support of HIV positive people, monks can be an example of non-discrimination and assist in the prevention of stigma. Monks can assist those with HIV through the teaching of meditation practice. Many young men do not enter the Monkhood for life so understanding sexually responsible behaviour is something they can take with them when they return to the lay community.
Level of cultural intervention
Culture as context Culture as content (drawing on Buddhist tradition and cultural items)
Culture as method (IEC materials) – tool-based
Activities
The project is “embedded” in culture, it is a cultural approach in itself as Buddhism and monks are such a large part of the majority culture, although it cannot incorporate those members of Cambodian society who are of different religious or ethnic backgrounds. Training workshops for monks were participatory or through small group work but monks cannot act or be portrayed by others in drama or theatre so that one “method” was not available in the participatory workshop approach. The main creative component was the IEC materials produced – a cloth poster showing the place of monks in the fight against AIDS and the use of the traditional monk’s bag (with the slogan that Monks also have a place/role in the fight against AIDS) as the carrying case for the IEC materials.
Outcomes
In a 2003 evaluation Monks participating in the workshops reported:
- clear knowledge of the facts about HIV/AIDS;
- increased confidence to undertake advocacy activities and to speak about HIV/AIDS in general;
- increased effectiveness in their use of the principle of compassion in their work, both when supporting people with HIV/AIDS and when discussing stigma and discrimination in their communities.
- using their training in a wide variety of formal and informal situations, including peer education sessions, preaching, Buddhist ceremonies, group discussions and national events such as World AIDS Day.
Beneficiary feedback (reported)
“A community member reported how one mobile funeral service operating in his district was refusing to cremate people who had died of AIDS. This was because of the widespread belief that HIV/AIDS could be passed on by touching the clothes of the dead person and through contact with their ashes at the cremation site. He spent some time with one of the monks who had attended the training in Phnom Penh and began to understand how these concerns were unfounded. Through support from the pagoda he was able to meet with the mobile funeral service and explain the facts about HIV transmission. As a result he managed to persuade them to start cremating people who had died of AIDS. Monks have subsequently attended such ceremonies and helped reduce the stigma attached to this function. As they are such public events he felt it likely that people were beginning to change their attitudes in response to seeing monks’ and the funeral service operator’s actions”.
“One monk master related how before the training he felt a certain amount of reluctance to support people with HIV/AIDS and believed that people had brought it on themselves by ‘playing around’. In addition one of his relatives, who was HIV positive, had been shunned by the community and forced to move away and live in isolation with his family. Until the workshop the monk had thought a great deal about this personal situation but could see no way to deal with it. Some time after the workshop he went to visit his relative with some of the handouts. He used these to explain the training he had been given and how he felt he had a role to support his relative and their family. He then went on to discuss these issues with the village leaders and community members and urged them to be more compassionate and support the family rather than cast them out and be afraid of them. Since his intervention the family have moved back into the community and as a result of the support they have received, their overall health has improved, as have their relations with the community at large”.
Sources
- SCUK evaluation report
- Interview with SCUK staff in Cambodia
