HIV/AIDS Education
In October 2005, the Lake Bunyonyi Development Company undertook to expand their community outreach by initiating an HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness education program. This was seen to be a priority because there had been no prior HIV/AIDS awareness or education done for the people around the lake. Therefore there is a serious lack of basic knowledge about HIV/AIDS and the majority of people have never been tested.
In February 2006, after much research, 30 carefully selected members of the lake community, representing 14 different villages, were trained at Bushara at a four-day workshop. LBDC has now begun to assist these community volunteers in providing education about HIV and AIDS to the people of their respective villages.
LBDC has also begun to work in partnership with TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) to make HIV testing, counseling and other medical treatments available to the people of Lake Bunyonyi. We are excited about this development, because these services have been previously unavailable or too costly for the majority of these people.
In the future we would like to broaden scope of this program to include other health benefits for the communities. We invite anyone interested in helping support this program to please contact us.