JIBILIKA Dance Trust in partnership with the United States embassy’s Presidential Emergency Plan for Aids Relief will host the STEP UP 2 HIV Schools Festival on November 29 at Morgan High School in Harare.
By Tinashe Sibanda
The event, which will be part of the World Aids Day commemorations, emanated from eight months of intensive performances and workshops at schools and communities mainly in Mbare and High Glen districts.
The Step Up to HIV project has in the past months managed to successfully engage young people in promoting an HIV and Aids free generation.
“At the festival, which is free of charge, students will get a chance to exhibit their music, drama and art presentations carrying the message on HIV and the most outstanding schools and performers will get awarded with certificates,” Jibilika communications officer Cecelia Chidoori said.
She said the platform uses popular youth culture such as hip hop, dancehall, beat box, spoken word as a medium to “step up” the fight against HIV and Aids.
Through this initiative, young people are furnished with the essential skills, knowledge and tools that enable them to live positively, become Aids activists and peer educators in their homes, schools, and communities.
Chidoori said the event would bring together about 24 schools that have been part of this on-going campaign to showcase their response to HIV through music and dance and each school was expected to choose two categories that they want to perform in between dance, poetry, music and theatre. “The festival will also have performances from popular youth dance groups drawn from various communities who have also been mentored into the programme and have been on the forefront of taking the message to schools through music, dance and spoken word,” she said.
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Chidoori said Jibilika Dance Trust intended to grow the project beyond the two districts of Harare to the rest of the city and ultimately the country as young people were proving more receptive to the campaign since it spoke their language.
She said they were grateful to the US embassy for their leading role in the fight against the deadly pandemic and having faith in the young people as patrons of their own destiny by supporting Step Up 2 HIV, a revolutionary approach in the drive for an HIV Free Generation.
“The initiative was born out of the 2012 edition of the annual Jibilika Dance Festival which coinciding with the World Aids Day commemorations whose theme was Step Up 2 HIV and was later adopted as a stand-alone project owing to overwhelming response from young people,” Chidoori added. The festival comes on the heels of growing concern over rampant cases of sexually transmitted infections among youths as a result of unprotected and deviant sexual activity exposing them to the high risks of contracting HIV and Aids.
