Great coverage of GRS Malawi in the Press

Hey Guys,

Just wanted to write a quick update with two important things.

1) In the last week, all of the major Malawian media organizations have been sending requests to interview Grassroot Soccer about the record breaking number of HIV tests at the two events that we hosted in Area 36 and Area 25 last week. The two biggest newspapers in the country have covered the events and all sorts of important people have been congratulating us on our huge numbers. Apparently the 615 people that we tested last Sunday is a record number of tests in one day in the history of HIV/AIDS in Malawi -- pretty awesome news.

One of my jobs in the past week was to write an article/press release to detail the success of our events. The Grassroot Soccer website posted it on the main website today, so I'll include the link if you want to check it out (if I were you I would check it out, not to read the article but to look at the picture from the event). Here is the link to the article on the GRS site:

http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/2009/11/03/arecordnumberofhivtestsinmalawi/

And if you don't want to look at the link, I'll copy and paste the article from the site here:

GRS Malawi saw unprecedented success during the weekend of October 23-25, 2009, through two community HIV testing events in Lilongwe. On the 23rd of October, through a half-day Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) tournament combining soccer, GRS activities, and HIV testing, GRS Malawi tested 215 people. Two days later, the GRS team, in partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine/Abbott Fund Centre of Excellence, tested another 610 people during an impressive community sensitization event with over 4,000 people in attendance. Testing a total of 825 Malawians in one weekend, GRS Malawi is making great strides to fight the pervasive stigma and fear that deter people from learning their status. David Jones, Vice President of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, stated, “there has not been a larger single HIV sensitization event organized in the country ever, or more people tested at a public event in one day.”

The following is a first hand account of the weekend written by Eren Munir, a Grassroot Soccer intern in Malawi:

After weeks of preparations, the weekend set to begin at noon on Friday, October 23rd, with a half-day VCT, and end at 4 pm on Sunday, October 25th, with a community-wide sensitization event, was finally here. Charged with the ambitious task of completing two separate testing events in two distinctly different areas of Lilongwe, Malawi in just 52 hours, we were unsure what a realistic goal for the events would be, but decided that testing 300 people, between the two, was reasonable.

Having tested 115 people at a similar half-day VCT tournament three weeks earlier, we hoped to test 100 people during Friday’s tournament. By incorporating soccer and HIV education into a positive environment around testing, however, we were able to provide counseling and testing services for 215 people, surpassing our goal while spending only $235 for the entire event! The cost-effectiveness of our model, which capitalizes on the power of soccer to encourage people to test, is inspiring. With one success behind us, we prepared for Sunday’s sensitization event, unsure of what to expect from an event we had never run before.

The sensitization event was even less predictable, and with church attendance a common Sunday activity in Lilongwe, we wondered if we would be able to draw a significant crowd. On our side, however, was the presence of Mafunyeta, one of Malawi’s most popular musicians. Early in the afternoon, with over a thousand people in the audience, we anticipated testing 200 people. But as the golden Malawian sun beat relentlessly on our backs, and the day wore on, suddenly, people began streaming in by the hundreds. Soon, the crowd had tripled, and over 4000 people gathered for the music, performances, and HIV education presented by GRS and Baylor’s Tingathe and PMTCT Outreach Programs. The sea of people before us was a powerful sight and at the end of the day, the news that 610 people had tested during the event was overwhelming. Bringing the total number of people tested to almost three times our initial predictions, the GRS team felt proud of and inspired by the community’s collective action in the face of an epidemic that claims the lives of more than 60,000 Malawians every year.

2) The second piece of news is that we’ve had to push back our next VCT event by 2 weeks. We were supposed to have our third and final VCT event in the Kawale district of Lilongwe this Friday (the 6^th) but because of a massive overhaul in the academic schedule, our plans have been completely changed.

Basically, the Malawian Government decided yesterday to completely switch the academic calendar by moving the Christmas holiday for each government school and by shortening the vacation time by 4 weeks. Can you imagine how upset you would be if you were a student and your vacation time was completely ruined???

The new academic calendar certainly makes things a little more difficult for us but we’re still going to try to have our even in Kawale before the break starts at the end of November. I’ll keep you updated as I know more.