Botswana’s Window of Hope

The people of Botswana don’t give up easily, even when faced with one of the greatest challenges—the AIDS epidemic. Instead they rise up and, together, find new ways to counter this deadly disease.

Approximately one out of every five people in the country are infected with HIV. The prevalence of this infection increases with age, so Botswana has decided to focus on educating its children about prevention.

But this is no ordinary HIV prevention campaign targeting youth. The Ministry of Education in Botswana launched a national program to teach students self-respect, decision-making, and personal and collective responsibility so they will be better able to make choices that protect their health. Teachers are now being trained in this new national curriculum where children will learn skills for life.

“Though students may have knowledge about HIV, many lack the skills to protect themselves,” says Naomi Mnthali, who worked in the Botswana Ministry of Education, Curriculum Development Department in 2002 when this project began. While many schools have HIV prevention material, they have no specific curriculum to guide them. “The Ministry wanted to help teachers teach skills-based education.”

To assist with developing the national curriculum, they formed a partnership with the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) who turned to EDC's Health and Human Development division, with its expertise in skills-based health education for youth. Project director, Scott Pulizzi, worked with the Botswana Ministry of Education, CDC, the World Health Organization, and teachers and administrators in Botswana to develop a curriculum for grades 1-12 that adapted effective behavior change strategies to fit the culture.

“You can’t simply present the facts and expect people to change long-standing practices and beliefs,” says Pulizzi. “So this curriculum taps the strong cultural theme of community connection and shared responsibility. It presents HIV prevention as the ultimate way to protect and strengthen families, relationships and community life.”

The curriculum, called Living: Skills for Life, Botswana’s Window of Hope, combines factual information about HIV/AIDS with realistic scenarios for group discussion. These scenarios, with fictitious characters facing real-life dilemmas, re-appear at each grade level so that children can follow them, learn from them, and grow with them. Local language, names, concepts, and situations are incorporated to make them more meaningful to students.

The curriculum also emphasizes self-reflection and provides youth with opportunities to learn how to cope with stress and difficult emotions in a healthy way. This engaging, interactive approach is key to helping students learn new ideas and develop new skills.

“Before we started using these materials in class, most children were not open about the challenges they were dealing with, whether it was about HIV and AIDS, alcohol abuse or parental divorce,” says a teacher from Ghanzi Senior Secondary School. “Since I started using the materials, more children have come forward with their concerns.”

Teachers are glad to have such good materials that are specific to Botswana youth and that provide effective methodologies to help students acquire skills to prevent infection or learn how to live positively and responsibly with HIV.

Mnthali was recently hired by EDC to train teachers across the country to use the curriculum. By September 2010, all 31,000 teachers in the primary and secondary grades will be prepared to use it in their own classroom, reaching 520,000 Botswana youth.