Keep the Promise: A Teaching Resource on HIV and AIDS

This resource, written for teachers and group leaders of 11 to 16 year olds, gives curricular support materials for classes on HIV and AIDS designed to motivate students to take action to fight the pandemic. Its objective is to build awareness, educate, and inspire young people to express their views by way of a letter writing campaign.

The resource contains background information, recent statistics, and life stories describing the effects that HIV and AIDS are having globally. There is a range of activities to help young people engage and interact with the issues.

Opening chapters explain the objectives of the lessons and how to use the resource. There is a question-and-answer format section containing many student questions about HIV and AIDS. The chapters that follow give life stories of children - both those living with HIV and those affected by the deaths of parents with AIDS. A subsequent chapter connects the stories to student activism and campaigning. For background on the history of AIDS, there is a timeline of events and promises made by world leaders.

Classroom activities are divided into two lessons that include finding out students' perceptions and knowledge on AIDS, helping them understand the stories of children affected by AIDS, supporting them in choosing how to get out a unified message on AIDS, and supporting their letter writing campaign.

There are articles on what letter writing has achieved, sample letters, and strategies about addressing the issues in a letter. The final chapters include teacher strategies to extend the reach of the letter writing campaign and to further engage classrooms on the topic. There is a chapter for classrooms of Christian religions dealing with issues of discrimination.

In addition to the teaching resource, the resources and links on this page support further activity planning.

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