The HIV/AIDS pandemic has become a serious health and development problem in many countries around the world. The Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates the number of HIV infections worldwide at about 34.3 million by the end of 1999 (UNAIDS, 1999). About 24.5 million infected people – 70 percent of the total – are living in sub-Saharan Africa. No cure is available for AIDS, and the disease threatens the social and economic well-being of the coun-tries.
The economic effects of HIV/AIDS are felt first by individuals and their families.
The household impacts begin as soon as a member of the household starts to suffer from HIV related illnesses. Illness increases the amount of money the household spends on health care, keeps workers away from their duties and causes school drop-outs, especially of girls who often have to care for the patient and to assist their families by earning money. When children are withdrawn from school in order to save educational expenses and increase the labour supply, the household suffers a severe loss of future earning potential.
In Malawi, as in most other African economies, agriculture is the largest sector, and also one of the worst hit by the pandemic. Studies have shown that HIV/AIDS will have devastating effects on agricultural productivity caused by loss of labour supply which is likely to lead farmers to cultivate less labour-intensive crops. In many cases this may mean switching from cash crops to subsistent food crops. Production will also suffer from loss of knowledge since more and more households are headed by children.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MoAI) and its Department of Agriculture Extension Services (DAES) recognised the impact HIV/AIDS has had on farming communities as well as among its extension staff:
“The challenge to agricultural extension is, firstly, to maintain a healthy, energetic human resource both in the extension services and in the farming community, and, secondly, to prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS. This requires integration of HIV/AIDS mitigation measures in the agricultural development programmes on the assumption that a healthy nation is a productive nation. The programme on factoring HIV/AIDS awareness in agriculture should therefore be strengthened.
Staff in the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation will also need HIV/AIDS educa-tion.” (MOAI, 1997:7)
Responding to the mission statement of “promoting equalisation (i.e. both
equal-ity and equequal-ity) in agricultural extension service provision through advocacy of gender, empowerment, poverty, environment, and HIV/AIDS concerns” (MOAI, 1997:12), the DAES with the assistance of the Agriculture Extension Support pro-ject (AES/GTZ) and Family Health International (FHI) conducted a Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop on HIV/AIDS issues for extension staff and community representatives of the pilot area in the Lilongwe West Rural Development Project (RDP) in May 2001.
This ToT Workshop was intended to enable the participants to organise and con-duct village events on HIV/AIDS awareness, spread, and control. These village events are supposed to be included in the daily work of the extension workers in co-operation with the training participants of other institutions and community representatives in order to form multi-sectoral teams (see 3.2.1).
A current interest of the MoAI is the exploration of alternative ways to dissemi-nate HIV/AIDS information and to communicate HIV/AIDS issues in the commu-nities and at the workplace. In particular theatre is regarded to be a useful IEC (Information, Ecucation, Communication) approach to respond to the epidemic which can become part of a Behavioural Change Initiative (BCI).
1.1 Objectives of the project
The SLE (Seminar für Laendliche Entwicklung – Centre for Advanced Training in Rural Development) study project on the subject “HIV/AIDS Prevention in the Ag-ricultural Sector in Malawi. A Study on Awareness Activities and Theatre.” has been conducted on behalf of the AES/GTZ project during a three-month research phase in Malawi.
During the discussion on the results of the study the DAES expressed most in-terest in the exploration of theatre as a possible medium for HIV/AIDS awareness activities, besides the evaluation of the ToT Workshop and an assessment of the follow-up activities. The purpose of the study was to find out whether the Training of Trainers Workshop was successful and fulfilled its task to enable the partici-pants to conduct village events and also to explore possibilities to integrate thea-tre into the prevention activities to make the efforts of the Department of Agricul-ture Extension Services (DAES) even more effective and efficient. According to this discussion the results were defined as follows:
• Possibilities of integrating theatre into the DAES activities related to
INTRODUCTION 9 HIV/AIDS are explored.
• The training of community representatives and extension staff is evalu-ated and recommendations are given. These include possibilities of com-municating the impact of HIV/AIDS on farming systems on village level.
These results should serve the goal of the project:
The rural population is empowered to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and to mitigate the impact of the epidemic.
As can be derived from the results, the focus of the study is to explore possibili-ties of integrating theatre into the HIV/AIDS prevention activipossibili-ties and to assist the Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop participants by assessing their potential and needs, as well as giving recommendations concerning both subjects.
1.2 Procedure of the project
The findings of the study ensue from a six-week preparatory phase in Berlin, Germany, and three-months research in Malawi. During the preparation phase, objectives were discussed, research questions were formulated, a working plan was drawn up, and a tool box of different methods was created.
The research in Malawi itself was divided into four phases:
• Week 1: Visits to relevant organisations and institutions, literature re-search, final agreement on results
• Week 2 to 6: Field phase, followed by the presentation of preliminary re-sults
• Week 7 to 9: Report writing, submission of draft report to stakeholders
• Week 11 to 12: Presentation of final result