On 08 February 2010, the first batch of interns for the Hope Project attended our second last workshop. This was held at SMK Sri Serdang, which is walking distance from UPM. We gave our presentation to one group of around 30 students. The room in which the workshop was held was not ideal, as there were desks placed in the middle, and the students sat around the edges of the room. However it seemed that all students could see the computer projection, and hear our voices. The school kindly provided gifts to use as motivators for the students during activities.
It was very lucky we had these gifts, as the students were extremely shy. On several occasions it took more than five minutes to get one person to answer a single question. It would probably be better if we thought about how to smoothly move on to another question if a volunteer is going to be so difficult to procure. The teacher told us at the end that the shyness mainly stems from their lack of confidence in English speaking. However, we really do need them to repeat some of our main messages, as otherwise we do not know whether they understood them. Some students asked to privately say the answer before speaking it to the class, so they clearly had an issue of confidence in talking to the entire room.
The teacher also provided us additional feedback. Her suggestion was to include some shocking pictures or videos at the start to grab the students’ attention. Her examples were some pictures of gross skin deformities and scabs, taken from a Malay brochure about HIV/AIDS. My belief however, is that these pictures are factually inaccurate, and are inappropriately playing on emotion. Skin problems are far less common in HIV and AIDS than such symptoms as coughs and general malaise. The aesthetics of the skin pictures may contribute to discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients, which is something we are trying to eliminate. The idea of including an introductory video, however, is a good one. Perhaps we can show the video of celebrities promoting the AIDS Aware campaign, which was made with PT Foundation.
Very kindly, the school gave us gifts of appreciation, and also provided the interns afternoon tea after the workshop.
