The mood was too high as participants started their first day of the course as Facilitators were their colleagues and someone could feel that they were ready for the whole week, it was so brilliant as participants were open and free to express their views and not holding back. It was quite a challenge to the Facilitators as the participants were asking a lot of questions hence making their understanding better.
The Participants were given some forms to fill at the beginning of the session just to get to see how much knowledge they have on HIV/AIDS and also for us Facilitators to see where we can assist them through the course. They were playing games and learning new games that were led by our LL2s who were just coming from their Leader Level 2 training in Johannesburg. We discussed with Leader Level 1s different topics like HIV/AIDS, how it affects the immune system and how the immune system reacts, the discussions were just flowing again that people were also free to speak in both Setswana and English; we also discussed the Myths and Attitudes on HIV/AIDS we felt that even if there is more information on HIV/AIDS people still lack information. There was also a discussion on Health and well being. The conclusion is that the Kicking AIDS Out Facilitators and leaders in SEDYEL is themselves responsible for their health, and that continued involvement in playing sport contributes majorly to ours and in general people’s health and sport can also help in self assessment.
Another interesting topic was STI, the participant were owning the session and the facilitators were just the drivers and it showed us that people have more information on STIs.
From all the sessions that we had our leaders were given a chance to go and plan for their sessions using the the facilitation tips that they got during the refresher course as to see whether they acquired some facilitation skills or not, from the facilitatirs side, we experienced that there is a lot of improvement since the LL1 course in March 2009 and we believe that the LL1s are in a position to facilitate to the Peer Leaders in SEDYEL. The LL1s had to be creative on doing their own games both sports related and traditional games related that they would think could be more enjoyable as we have seen this year that our athletes/players were not interested in movement games anymore and it was making the Peer Leaders work difficult and they were able to come up with a number of new sport related games/drills with lifeskills objectives. We believe this games/drills will help strengthing the implementation of Kicking AIDS out in the sport at SEDYEL.
At the end of the course participants were given evaluation forms to fill and from their feedback we realized that the LL1s were happy with the course. It helped build their confidence and again out leaders know now that they have to plan every time before they go for their outreaches or Facilitations.