Submitted by cadre-editor on Wed, 05/14/2014 - 11:45.
DramAidE’s Health Promoters (HP) Project was established in 2002 and currently partners with 14 universities in South Africa, across 24 campuses. The programme employs HIV positive young people who are open about their HIV status and is aimed at raising awareness about HIV prevention, promoting stigma reduction, HIV testing and positive living. When the programme was first established, there was little being done within higher education institutions (HEIs) to systematically address HIV and AIDS risk, prevention, and the care and support of HIV positive students and staff. The aim of this project was to address that gap and support the development of campus HIV and AIDS programmes.
Ten years later, a lot has changed in the way higher education institutions approach HIV and AIDS. The programme’s technical partner, JHHESA, commissioned this ‘appreciative inquiry’ in order to understand and document the project’s long-term contribution to the sector, the degree to which the project has integrated into the institutions it partners with, and the future sustainability the programme within this changing environment. The evaluation had four primary objectives:
- To summarise the Health Promoters project’s achievements since its inception and artic late the programme’s core strengths and contributions to South African higher education institutions’ broader HIV response over the last ten years.
- To determine DramAidE’s current position within the higher education sector and HIV and AIDS response environment.
- To discern what environmental conditions have proven conducive to the project’s success and what sorts of factors have created challenges in terms of how it has integrated within institutional structures.
- To identify possibilities for the future growth and success of the programme and to inform strategies for DramAidE’s future involvement within higher education.