This past weekend I was actually able to complete my project, and it was a great success. The seminar was held and the participants had a great time. I do feel that the seminar was a small pebble in a big pond but I feel that even by helping one person who has the virus or helping someone to know their status will have a chain reaction and that impact will eventually help the entire world. Around 8:00 that morning, the committee got together to begin setting up for the arrival of the participants. The night before the seminar we called and checked to be sure that everyone that had agreed to attend would in fact be able to attend. After we got confirmation from everyone the next morning it was time to start setting up. We were able to get local groups to come and entertain the participants during the time testing was going on, but we wanted to begin the seminar with a general meeting just to be sure everyone knew the purpose of the seminar was not for the food or the entertainment, but it was to help spread the awareness of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the world and to inform these young adults of how to avoid becoming infected or spreading this disease by presenting them with facts and helping them by any means necessary.

                When the participants first arrived around 1:00 we will had a general meeting where we informed them of what was going to be going on during the seminar and to gave them all the encouragement they needed at the time to actively participate. We had a few speakers there to speak with all of the participants in general and then we separated the female and male participants. The female participants were placed with young female counselors with whom they felt comfortable enough to ask whatever questions they had about HIV/AIDS. The male participants were also placed with male counselors who would be able to answer whatever questions the participants may have had. The reason why we chose to first place these participants with young counselors is because, speaking from a young adult’s point of view, the participants will most likely feel more comfortable speaking to someone with whom they have something in common with and not someone who they feel will be parental and judging. There were, however some adult counselors on-site for extreme situations that the young counselors may have not been able to effectively handle. After the separation of the male and females, we then found a discrete way to separate the different groups of participants according to those who needed more information on HIV/AIDS, those who are sexually active and needed to be tested, and also those who knew they were affected with the virus or disease and simply needed some help and guidance. Once we were able to separate the participants into those groups, we spoke to them with gender separation, then we asked them would they like to know how people in their situation of the opposite sex felt about those situations and they all thought it was a good idea. We then kept them in the groups according to the status, but we made the groups co-ed.

                The group sessions were much more effective than we expected them to be and the participants all said that they were happy that there were people there who were honor students or considered “good” or high class students who were caught up in the wrong company and made one bad decision that in turn affected their entire lives. The participants agreed that this helped bring the reality to them that this virus is not selective, it can happen to anyone regardless of how much money they have or how many people they know. The also liked the fact that we had young counselors there and they felt more comfortable and were much more open when talking to those counselors than when we brought in the adult counselors. After a few hours of speaking with the counselors and receiving all the information, the participants were allowed to enjoy the food and the entertainment that we had provided. They were also encouraged to participate in the poetry contest. During this time, we had the testing site available for the students to get tested. We made the students aware of the prizes that they could win by getting tested and we also let them know that they would receive an HIV/AIDS awareness t-shirt for participating in the testing. While the testing was going on, we allowed some of the participants to go on stage and recite poems that they enjoyed or poems that they had written pertaining to this epidemic. At the end of the readings, we allowed the audience to decide on three winners who all received gift cards to restaurants.

                Overall the seminar was a great success and we are looking forward to having another seminar possibly during the summer. The participants were asked to give us some feedback and they did in fact give us some suggestions as to how we could improve different aspects of the seminar, but they did say that they all left there knowing something that they didn’t know before the seminar. It was a great success and I am very proud that we were able to impact the world with this one seminar, and I know that the more seminars we are able to do the more lives we will be able to impact. I would like to thank everyone who helped and everyone who gave us their support and allowed us to make this seminar a success.

According to Christian belief Jesus was crucified to save us all from our sins, however, historical facts and the Bible tell us something a little different. Jews crucified Jesus because he committed a sin in claiming to be the Messiah which he truly was. Because that was blasphemous to the Jews of that time, they gave Jesus a trial and he was found guilty of claiming to be the Messiah and that is why they hung the sign over his head that translates to King of the Jews.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Week 13: Accomplishments/pics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.