Culture and HIV/AIDS

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Title of project

Artistic Approach to HIV/AIDS

Organisation

Community Focus Group

Country/region

Embakasi, Nairobi, Kenya

Project focus

Using poetry and other performance forms to disseminate information and raise issues around HIV/AIDS, and to mobilise practical support for AIDS orphans.

Background

This is a project of the Community Focus Group, (CFG), which started in 2001 after the founder, Pamela Ateka, lost her sister to AIDS, and took responsibility for her sister’s small son. Pamela had always loved poetry and acting, and decided to use these skills and those of her friends to raise funds for the care of AIDS orphans, and to create awareness in society at large.

Level of cultural intervention used in the project

Culture as expression: story-telling, poetry, and drama are used as vehicles for artistic expression aimed at influencing the audience’s emotions.

Participants in the Community Focus Group Project using an Artistic Approach to HIV/AIDS

Activities

CFG mounts performances (story-telling, song, poetry, theatre) at concerts and festivals. For performances carried out at CFG’s own instigation, the team first identifies issues that people in the slums are talking about, and then designs shows which reflect some aspect of these issues. The shows, which are put on in local halls, typically include a range of entertainments – dance, music, poetry, story-telling – as well as dramas designed to explain, for example, how people get infected. Issues which have a bearing on HIV transmission and which are addressed in the plays include sex-work, alcoholism, drugs, poverty.

The group develops the plays together, trying to make them both funny and realistic, but ending on a note of hope. On other occasions CFG is commissioned by organisations to develop plays on specific themes, such as HIV/AIDS in the workplace. Performances are mostly in Kenya, but Pamela Ateka has been invited to perform in story-telling and poetry festivals around the globe, for example in Australia and the U.S.

CFG runs a feeding centre for 26 children, who come daily at lunch times and receive a meal and moral support from the helpers. The children are all AIDS orphans but living in families. When funds permit, the centre takes them on outings and provides food packages for the children’s host families, and assists with money for school fees and uniforms. The costs of the feeding centre are met by fees for performances and by the income-generating activities of volunteers, most of whom are young, unemployed college-leavers living in the slum area. Royalties from Pamela’s book of poetry and from her poems published in newspapers are also donated to the centre.

Outcomes

In local performances, volunteers distribute report forms; some of these are filled in by people themselves, sometimes with the help of volunteers. This provides the main mechanism for assessing impact. Raising HIV/AIDS issues openly in the community has led to changes in people’s attitudes. There is less stigma now, and young people are resolving to change their sexual behaviour, in view of their important role in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Most people have experience of HIV/AIDS in their families, but don’t feel they can talk about it. Pamela’s experience is that if she can tell her story, it helps people to talk about their problems.

Beneficiary feedback (reported)

Despite the positive feedback, the group sometimes feels discouraged when nothing seems to have really changed. Personal testimonies are often the most moving, and make the effort seem worthwhile – for example the young man who came up to Pamela in tears after a performance in Australia, and told her it was the first time anyone had understood his problem.

Sources

Pamela Ateka
Director
Community Focus Group
PO Box 447-00518
Nairobi
Kenya
Tel. +254 737 435 008 / +254 723 220827

pateka@communityfocusgroup.org / info@communityfocusgroup.org

http://www.communityfocusgroup.org/

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