HIV/ AIDs Informational Action

Issues related to HIV and AIDs are very common nowadays. We hear about it every day: in news , in journals and papers, a lot of books are being printed about these problems in the world.

Obviously Armenian society is not aware of it as well. Assuming that people in Armenia, especially the students, don't have satisfactory information about it , the IREX- fellows decided to hold a HIV/ AIDs informational action at Yerevan State University. The promotion happened on Dec 12, 2006. For doing it alumni collaborated with many NGOs, one of which was APEC NGO ( AIDs prevention education & Care), they supplied 1500 brochures about HIV and AIDS. Those were distributed to our students. For making the atmosphere more relaxed and friendly there was a music and food - give away ( candies, cookies and juice).

The mission of the action was to calculate the percentage of the students who know what the HIV is , what are the ways of transmitting the desease, if they know the differences between the HIV and AIDs etc. A lot of students from the faculty of sociology volunteered for the project, so we could manage it. Special mini - test forms were designed, and our volunteers asked those questions to the students. At the end of the questions the right answers were given to them, so they can read them after being intrigued from the questions.

So here are the results:
Out of 916 surveys - Only 5% is fully informed about the case, 14% is enough informed about the issue, 73 % has a very little and wrong knowledge , 8% doesn't have any idea about this big issue.

So as the results showed our students are not informed about the case, and I should admit they were not that interested in the presentation, some of them even thinks that its not a problem for the Armenian society, some girls found it offensive to answer to the questions about HIV / AIDs and STDs etc. This project is supposed to have more promotions, ad on a TV , and one more public action in spring, so we try our best to convince the people that this is a very important issue , and should be taken into consideration more seriously.

This project became real due to the hard work of IREX alumni, IREX office , Department of State of US and many volunteers from the universities.


Lets prevent our society from getting the desease and spreading it.

We can prevent it as much as we can only with your help, support and understanding.