Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

The need to be aware
By Renu Warnasuriya
On February 29, nearly 300 Sri Lankans, both young and old took to the streets to create awareness about AIDS. Organised by the Interact Club of St. Peter’s College, Colombo, together with the Roteract Clubs of Colombo, Colombo South and Colombo East, and sponsored by UNICEF, the aim of the AIDS awareness campaign was to teach youth about the transmission, cure and prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) and to eradicate the social stigma associated with it. Awareness is essential in the case of STDs as ignorance is one of the main causes for the rapid spread.

Accompanied by a papara band, the walk commenced at 9.30 a.m. from the Henry Pedris Stadium. The majority of the crowd were Interactors from various schools, 70 of them from Zahira College, who incidentally won a prize for having the most number of participants at the walk.

At the stadium, the educational exhibition and fair began. Five school clubs had stalls on various STDs. Holy Family Convent, Visakha Vidyala, Zahira College and the United Nations club of St. Peter’s College were the schools responsible for these stalls.The main AIDS stall was run by St. Peter’s College, who distributed AIDS ribbons and placards to the crowd.

Each stall was decorated with posters, banners and placards. Various devices had been used to get the message across. Since many of the posters had been designed and created by the Interactors themselves, they were attractive and easy to understand.

Ms. Padmini Rana-weera, Programme Officer, Education, UNICEF and Dr. Harishchandra Yakan-dawala, Consultant, Adolescent HIV/AIDS, were the judges. The Visakha stall was adjuged the most informative stall. These Interactors were a step ahead of the rest with their slide show on STDs.

The organisers went on to say that all the stalls had done a good job in collecting information and had covered all the important aspects about the respective diseases.

The schools that did not have stalls on a disease contributed through game stalls, food stalls and body-painting stalls. All schools were given certificates of participation while the two prize winning clubs were given cash awards. Picking up where the papara band left off was the live DJ. He was followed by Lanthra, a soloist, and to top it all off were the bands Insanity and JADA.

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