Last week was all about promotion! We contacted 10 different schools and got permission to visit the schools and promote our Midsummer camp. It felt good that the headmasters (who were the ones that we first contacted) were so positive- they could really see that this is a great project!
The theme of this program is HIV/Aids and reproductive health, in this project we don’t work directly towards infected people or people that are in high risk groups. What we try to do is to minimize the risk of youth drinking alcohol during the midsummer celebrations, since we know that when they do that their risk behaviour is greater. By excluding the alcohol we hope to minimize their risk behaviour when it come to sex, but also show the youths that alcohol is not a must when celebrating Midsummer.
So far in the project we’ve learnt that it is hard to attract youths to a camp like this in Sweden. When going to the schools we talked to more then 1000 youth and still we only have 13 people that have signed up for the camp. The Cambodian and Zambian participants are very surprised that it is so difficult to get participant! While us (the Swedish participants) are not as surprised, even thou we thought it would be a little bit easier! We learnt how important marketing is, and how expensive it is!
Jonna- the count down has started! 10 days to Midsummer Camp
