Using ‘edutainment’ to prevent HIV on a university campus
By Pastor Martin Ssempa with Manda Gibson

PrimeTime around the pool Each week students at Makerere University gather around the university's pool to participate in PrimeTime.

Every Saturday night, as many as 4,000 students meet around the swimming pool at Makerere University in Uganda. They watch other students perform drama, poetry, music, and dance – all with the goal of communicating the message of sexual abstinence.

These students are part of PrimeTime, a place that seeks to change the high rates of HIV/AIDS among Uganda’s young people. In Uganda, around 700 people become infected with HIV/AIDS every day. Around 60 percent of those are youth – making high school and university campuses the epicenter for new infections.

I serve as pastor of Makerere Community Church. As my church and I witnessed the problem of HIV in young people, we decided to do something about it. In 1999, we started PrimeTime, a value-based HIV/AIDS “edutainment” program – combining education and entertainment – at Makerere University, Uganda’s largest public university. Less than 50 students attended the first meeting; today it is the largest weekly meeting on campus.

	Learn more about prevention Listen to these two downloads featuring Pastor Ssempa's work to learn more about preventing HIV through teaching abstinence. Rethinking AIDS Prevention Download resource >> Teaching Youth about Sex and HIV Download resource >>

When Uganda’s youth arrive at the university, they often find themselves with more freedom and more energy than ever before. In expending this energy, they end up in the bars, night clubs – peer groups that expose them to risky behaviors. These new interactions and activities impair the ability of the student to make sexually sober decisions about their lives, putting them at greater risk of catching HIV/AIDS.

At PrimeTime, students find an alternative to these risky behaviors. In addition to the value-based entertainment, PrimeTime offers vital life skills, guidance, and a community of change.

Students also find a place to develop and use their leadership skills. In addition to the weekly meetings, PrimeTime has a community drama team and a team of peer counselors who regularly reach out to the rest of the community. A youth drop-in center called the White House offers students a safe place during the week.

Several characteristics make PrimeTime unique in HIV/AIDS prevention:

• PrimeTime combines education and entertainment. As our young people enjoy the programs, they’re being educated in a way that is acceptable to them.
  
• The performers and entertainers at PrimeTime rallies are role models. Their lifestyles reflect the message they share.
  
• Abstinence commitment. The students are challenged to make a commitment to abstinence and then to sign a PrimeTimer’s abstinence pledge card. The drama, speakers, and music at weekly meetings reinforce that abstinence commitment.
  
• High involvement of young people. PrimeTime is designed by youth, for youth. The technicians, emcees, planners, and others are young people who volunteer their time because they love the program.
  
• PrimeTime is a faith-based initiative. Faith-based organizations are specialists in morality.
  
• Its unique growth over the years. With more than 4,000 students weekly, PrimeTime has grown so large that it is short on space.
  
• Though PrimeTime is faith-based, it is all-inclusive. Evangelical Christians amount to only 40 percent of those involved; others come from different faiths.
  
• PrimeTime runs a youth drop-in center called the White House. The White House is a home to many PrimeTimers, a place for small group meetings and one-on-one counseling, and a place to hang out. To many, it is their home away from home.
  
• PrimeTime brings together the faith community (church) and the university. The university has a social responsibility to its community; however, it is limited in its capacity to adequately meet this responsibility. PrimeTime meets part of this need through its public and private status. The church offers leadership and logistical support, and together, the need for social and community responsibility is met.

	The Power of Sex This series tackles the difficult and often misrepresented topic of sex. Doug Fields, Saddleback's pastor to students, explores not just how students are assaulted by sexual messages, but how the choices they make will shape their entire lives. While this series addresses the consequences of bad decisions, it is focused around encouraging and teaching students how to make the right decisions – and offering the forgiveness of an almighty God when things don’t go as planned. Learn more >>

In an environment of sexual pressure, PrimeTime and the White House are good places to be and receive immunity. And in addition to encouraging students to remain abstinent and, therefore, avoid HIV, PrimeTime also offers care and support for those who are HIV positive.

PrimeTime has emerged as a best-practice model for behavior change in the worldwide fight against HIV/AIDS; leaders, including myself, have spoken at major international HIV/AIDS conferences.

In looking at more than five years of PrimeTime, we have realized that changing behavior does not occur overnight. It calls for time, hard work, sacrifice, patience, consistence, and hope. But in the end, it is all rewarding, and what seemed impossible suddenly has become possible.

Groups like PrimeTime are forming on other university campuses. To aid that growth, PrimeTime and Makerere Community Church have created an NGO, Campus Alliance to Wipeout AIDS (CAWA). CAWA seeks to motivate and empower other youth groups and communities to start similar behavior change programs.

Crowd As many as 4,000 students gather each week for PrimeTime, the largest weekly meeting on campus.

For churches and other groups interested in starting a program similar to PrimeTime, I recommend the following steps:

1. Identify a community need. PrimeTime started as a response to the loneliness and sexual entertainment on campus; now it’s an alternative to that.
   
2. Work with the resources that your community already has. Instead of building a meeting place, PrimeTime uses the university swimming pool area. Instead of hiring many workers, we use volunteer manpower.
   
3. Engage the volunteer spirit of the young people. Using the young people as volunteers will ensure they participate in planning and carrying out the program. The end result will be a program by them, for them.
   
4. Identify a strategic location where you can hold your activities. We chose the swimming pool, because it is centrally located on the main campus. It is easily accessible and open to anyone.
   
5. Make the programs interactive. Ensure feedback; it must be a two-way interaction lest you miss out on the youth participation.
   
6. Support the volunteers with incentives occasionally. This boosts their morale.
   
7. Identify viable partners like the community and its leadership, and involve them. 
   
8. Start a youth drop-in center. Though PrimeTime meets at the swimming pool on Saturday nights, the White House provides a place for PrimeTimers to meet, talk, seek counseling, and hang out during the week. 
   
9. Identify a person who will offer visionary leadership. This person should be youth friendly, bilingual if necessary, and a role model who represents and supports your ideals on behavior change. 
   
10. Consult with CAWA. We will be very glad to help you. 
    
11. Pray and fast before you launch and even while you are in process.

For more information, contact Martin Ssempa:

U.S.:
World Outreach Ministries
Mission Service Agency
P.O. Box B
Marietta, GA 30061
770-424-1545

Uganda:
Makerere Community Church
Plot 56 Makerere Hill Road
Box 21007
Kampala, Uganda
256 772 641028 (cell)
256 412 543765 (office)

E-mail: ssempa@aol.com

Related: Pastor Martin and Tracey Ssempa's prayer for youth