The activity kit contains a range of materials, ideas and triggers for use in schools or in informal education. There is a central script – a variety of voices which explore and question. This can be adapted and performed in class, as the basis of a drama project, in an assembly, as part of a dynamic group activity or simply as a briefing note to a teacher.

The activities section offers ways to enhance a performance, with stand alone ideas to explore the issues in more depth.

Download the assembly kit as a Word document or PDF document or continue reading this page.

Age group

This resource is suitable for seven to 16 year olds.

Aims

• To help develop students' ability to understand and respect those who are managing their HIV positive status.
• To raise students' awareness of the damage done by stigma and discrimination and to think about ways to provide positive help to people living with HIV.
• To appreciate that levels of HIV can amount to a major emergency, and can make other disasters worse.

Script

The speaking parts in the following script have been assigned to four voices. These can be split further to enable more participants. Or they can be combined and read by fewer speakers, as necessary.

Voice 1: Illness can happen to anyone. From coughs and colds to more serious conditions, infections are all around us. No one wants to get ill. Yet most of us can expect some form of illness at some times in our lives.

Voice 2: Imagine you were ill. What would you want? Invite students' responses if circumstances permit, or simply carry on with the script

Voice 3: I'd want someone to look after me - sympathy and understanding.

Voice 4: I'd want medicine to help my body fight the illness.

Voice 3: I'd want medicine that took away the symptoms, too - that made me feel better.

Voice 4: I'd want friends to send me cards and gifts that cheered me up.

Voice 3: I'd want visitors, too. So I didn't get bored.

Voice 1: These are all natural wants. If we are lucky, we get them in some form or other. It doesn't make being ill nice - but it can make it not so bad.

Voice 2: Do people usually get these things? Invite responses, if appropriate

Voice 1: Today we are going to focus on one illness, one type of infection, which has an impact on people which is very different from the ideal.

Voice 2: Those who become infected are sometimes not well supported or looked after. In fact, just the opposite.

Voice 1: They sometimes face criticism, not sympathy.

Voice 2: They may not get visitors, they are more likely to be shunned, avoided.

Voice 1: Tens of thousands of people do not have access to medicine to make them healthy.

Voice 2: And even those who do get medicine will often feel very ill because of their side-effects.

Voice 3: The infection we are talking about is known as HIV - or human immunodeficiency virus. It can lead to a syndrome, a collection of symptoms, which can make someone very ill. Without medication, their lives are likely to be shorter, as a result of what is called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

Voice 4: What makes this so different? Our focus today is on what is called stigma.

Voice 1: Stigma is the disapproval, the sense of shame or disgrace, that affects a group of people. Those living with HIV, and their families, are very often stigmatised.

Voice 2: They are being blamed for having the infection.

Voice 3: People who know them, even friends and family, do not always sympathise. Instead they condemn.

Voice 4: How does stigma make things worse for people living with HIV?

Voice 1: It denies them the care, sympathy and understanding that can be so vital to health.
 
Voice 2: It prevents people being tested for the infection, so people carry the disease without knowing it, and don't get treatment.

Voice 3: That leads to increase infection rates. So more people suffer.
Voice 4 Children of those who have died from the infection can be rejected, rather than helped to find care and support.

Voice 1: People can become homeless, perhaps having to move out of their community to find somewhere to live in another part of the country.

Voice 2: Many of the worst effects are now in poorer parts of Africa and Asia. But even in the world's wealthiest countries, when large numbers of people began to get the infection, some hospitals refused to admit them.

Voice 3: All over the world, people suffer more and are more likely to feel isolated and neglected because of negative attitudes.

Voice 4: The humanitarian view is clear. People who are ill with HIV should have the same human rights as everyone else. They should have the same right to healthcare and protection from disease.

Voice 1: Yet many people living with HIV do not have access to prevention, care, support and treatment services.

Voice 2: We should be aware that people living with HIV deserve much more.

End of script

Activities

Use the following ideas to add to or adapt the above script, or as standalone activities.

1. Message cards

Create large cards that tell the desired and undesired responses to illness. Used as part of the script above, they could be held up by students, then flipped round to see the reverse effect. Four would do it, as follows:

• card 1 - support / rejection
• card 2 - understanding / stigma and discrimination
• card 3 - health care / symptoms untreated
• card 4 - visitors and good wishes / isolation and humiliation

For speed, just adopt the above examples. But if time permits, encourage students to devise their own words. They could also devise visual images to reinforce the points.

2. Pictures with meaning

Photographs help show the reality of people living with HIV. Pictures of orphans and vulnerable children often show young people just the same as any others around the world - indicating how HIV can affect the lives of anyone and everyone.

Examples of positive images might include those showing education in action. Others show campaigners and activists - including young people living with HIV. Students may wish to see celebrities committed to raising awareness.

There is a good selection of images at the website of the UK-based international HIV and AIDS charity Avert. See avert.org/pictures

With all photographs, check the copyright situation and obtain permission for the use you require.

3. Music

There is a strong tradition of music in all aspects of HIV work. Celebrity musicians have released songs, given concerts, and led campaigns for awareness raising. In some parts of the world, such as East Africa, music and dance have been used to spread information and influence behaviour.

Ask students to research HIV-related songs. Selections of music from around the world could provide background to any performance or group work.

4. Friendship and illness

Charities in Brazil have been working with teenagers who are living with HIV. At one workshop, a group of young people discussed the topic of friendship.

The question arose:"Is it hard to talk about HIV to friends who are not positive?"

Ask students what they think the response of the teenagers might have been. Would it be hard or easy? What might be the difficulties.

After discussion, show them these two responses:

"I have never told any of my friends. I am ashamed,"said Tamires."I think they won't come close to me anymore. They will be disgusted. There are times I want to tell them, but I don't know how, I just can't do it."

Someone else said:"I have a friend who I talk to about everything. I want to tell him, but I keep thinking: what if we have a quarrel? What if he becomes spiteful and then tells everybody."

Does hearing the stories change students views at all? In what way? Do students think the Brazilian teenagers quoted are being pessimistic or realistic? Do students understand the risks of revelation, and the teenagers' reluctance?

For a written exercise, ask students to write an open letter to all their friends saying how they themselves would react to hearing that someone they knew was living with HIV. Is it realistic to say nothing would change? How can you show genuine compassion and sympathy as well as honesty and realism?

5. More on stigma

Here are two more stories of people living with HIV:

"I am a mum of two and was diagnosed in 2002. After I told my brother that I was HIV positive he decided that it was his right to tell my older sister. They don't talk to me much now, except to tell me that they think it's wrong. I didn't tell my little sister, so she doesn't know." -Tracy

"I have been living away from my family since I was 18 years old. I am now 38. My family (mother, 4 sisters, and 1 brother) cannot accept me for who I am (gay) and having HIV.

"I returned home (New Mexico; USA) after being away for sometime; I was in the military and travelled a lot. I did not expect to get HIV. I returned home to be with my family, because I missed them. I wanted love and support.

"Being HIV positive is a lonely journey when you have no support. No luck when I told my family. They totally told me, I was no longer part of the family." - Kory

These and other stories are from the website of the National Aids Trust www.nat.org.uk

Invite students to imagine they work for a charity trying to help people like Tracy or Kory and reduce the isolation they feel. Ask them to draw up an advertisement to recruit befrienders - volunteers who might offer the emotional and practical support that can help people living with HIV.

The advertisement could be a poster, or a radio or video appeal. Ask students to script it, taking care to respect the dignity of people with HIV, at the same time as identifying the humanitarian help they need. If possible, turn the ideas into reality.

6. HIV and disasters

Encourage an exploration of what constitutes a disaster. Use this broad, three-step process:Ask students to list as many different types of major emergency or disaster they can think of. How would they define an emergency? What is included, what isn't?

Introduce them to the basic definition of emergency, as used by the United Nations. (see below)

Look together at HIV epidemics in this light, using the argument below.

Finish by talking about how HIV can make any disaster situation worse.

Definition of emergency
According to the United Nations, a disaster is any "serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material or environmental losses which exceed the ability of a society to cope using only its own resources".

The definition covers all disasters irrespective of their cause. That is, it covers both natural events and those caused by people.

Does HIV meet this definition? Yes, in some places, according to the 2008 World Disasters Report. There are cases of HIV in every country in the world. But there is not a global epidemic, or a global disaster. HIV is a disaster where it has become generalised and widely pervasive. The one region where that has occurred is sub-Saharan Africa, home to about two-thirds of the world's HIV-positive individuals.

In that region:

• individuals and communities have been destroyed by the epidemic. 
• about 15 million children have lost one or both parents. 
• children aged 10 or less run households and cannot go to school because they must look after their families. 
• grandparents struggle to care for their grandchildren, at a time when they should have been looking forward to being cared for themselves. 

Talk about how this matches students' understanding of disasters.

7. Basic facts

Get students to research basic statistics on HIV in the UK and overseas.

Provide questions for them to find answers to, either devised from their own interests and knowledge level, or based on the following ideas:

Is HIV an infection mainly of young people or of the elderly?
What are the main routes of transmission for HIV?
How many people get access to drugs?
What are some of the usual side-effects of HIV medications?
Here are some starting points for fact research on the internet:

www.worldaidsday.org
www.nat.org.uk
www.avert.org