New Project...Prayers Needed

My last blog before Christmas showcased the Reproductive Health : Empowering Adolescents for Life graduation, the final celebration of the accomplishments of the year.  This year, our REAL project is combining with our VCT project (voluntary counseling and testing) to have a more focused approach on prevention of HIV and caring for people living with HIV.  The new project is called REAP - Reaching and Empowering Adolescents and People who are vulnerable.

This was a difficult decision and came with many prayers and discussions with various people.  It felt right in moving this direction, but I knew it would not necessarily be easy; I am afraid of making the decisions and the possible ramifications even though I know they were right.  Here are a few steps we have taken to get this new project off the ground and the prayers we need to keep it moving.

Step one – Meet with the project staff.  We had a staff meeting before the break and in the end of January, and praise God, everything seems to be ok.  I have said it before and continue to say the VCT staff have the hardest job in SP, but they are a joy to work with.  I also spent some time training the newly promoted program manager and it will be great to see her grow into this position.  Please pray for the staff in this transition, for unity among the combined staff, for God’s peace and joy to fill their lives in this difficult position, and for the program manager to learn and grow.

Step two – Meet with the volunteers. We had a meeting with all the adults/church leaders who volunteered for the two projects last year.  We have always struggled with motivation/incentives with the SRH volunteers so we opened with an activity and discussion on volunteerism.  It didn’t go quite as planned and we had a long discussion concluding with a remark to the volunteers to think on whether this is their vision and passion, because if it is not, the project will fail.  I felt like it was a good discussion and I felt like God had given me the strength and boldness to speak what needed to be said; but I didn’t know if we would have any volunteers in a week.

The next week, the volunteers came back but basically refused to work with the current program manager.  We had another discussion to try to resolve some of the problems, but there remains interpersonal conflict between one volunteer and the manager, and the whole issue of incentives is unresolved.  We need your prayers as we seek to resolve these issues with the volunteers.  The church is key to the exit strategy and success of the project, but we need volunteers are who passionate about the work and willing volunteers. We cannot pay all the volunteers and in the end it would probably not be helpful to long term success.  The base manager has had a couple meetings recently and when I return next week we will have another meeting with the volunteers, so please pray for open hearts on all sides, and wisdom and discernment, especially for the staff (including me!).

Step three – Meet with the peer educators. The same day as the first volunteer meeting, we met all the peer educators from both programs.  While the main issue with the volunteers was their motivation/incentive, for the peers it was concerns about combining groups.  It was interesting but makes sense.  Adolescents are concerned about their peers, and we were mixing up their peer group.  This meeting therefore focused on unifying the peers.  No more VCT peer educators and SRH peer educators, but one group of REAP peer educators.  The peer educators are on board and have already completed the refresher training.  They are ready to start meeting weekly as an after school group in their various schools, we just need to resolve the leadership group issue to have leaders! So again, please pray for God to work through that situation so the peer educators will have good role models to lead them this year.

Step four – Meet with the people living with HIV.  This Friday is the monthly peer support group meeting in Foya town and I will attend to observe and discuss some possible activities to encourage more decentralized peer support.  It is a need noted by the program manager of the VCT last year, but it will be interesting to see how the PLHIV see the situation and whether they will be in support of this.  Stigma and lack of disclosure make it a challenge.  Pray for good understanding with the support group (there have been difficulties in the past with unmet expectations with this group) and for wisdom in how to move forward together.