SAFE NEPAL is a non-political, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization; officially registered in the Kathmandu District Administration Office, and affiliated with Social Welfare Council (SWC) Kathmandu.
We are working to raise awareness in the fields of School-based HIV/AIDS, Oral Health, Environmental issue and Community Health programs.
In relation to educating people about HIV/AIDS, our focus is on Peer Education, creating community dialogue, and influencing local and national policy-makers about strategies for preventing HIV infection, and caring for and treating HIV-positive individuals. We aim to educate and inform youths, school children, and college students. Outside our schools and colleges, occupational groups are the principal target for our programs in the community at large, groups such as sex workers, truck drivers, migrant workers, drug users, MSM, barbershop workers and under-privileged groups. And also sexually active young adults, we want to raise public awareness about the issues of HIV/AIDS through Peer Education campaigns, trainings, Street Drama, booklets, seminars and community based programs.
At the simplest level we want to inform people about the dangers of HIV-infection and help them to protect themselves and other people from the virus, firstly by giving them information about how HIV is transmitted (and how it is NOT transmitted) and secondly by informing them about the Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) which follows infection with the HIV virus. People want to know how to protect themselves from HIV infection. They want to know what kind of behaviour is dangerous, and what kind is not. They need to be taught not to discriminate against HIV-positive people, or to believe that an HIV-positive person can pass the virus on to others by simple body-contact, or by coughing or sneezing. Most important of all people need to be encouraged and assisted to put their knowledge of HIV/AIDS to good use and to act on their knowledge in their daily lives - for example, how to obtain and use condoms, how to persuade their partners to practice safer sex in order to prevent infection, when to seek medical care and so on. These are not simple issues if you do not understand the facts about HIV/AIDS.
SHYNESS is the main BARRIER to OVERCOMING IGNORANCE and acquiring KNOWLEDGE. Many school children feel shy to talk about HIV/AIDS with adults. They would feel less shy if they could talk about HIV/AIDS with classmates they trust, who could then draw their teachers into their dialogues too. That way schoolchildren could be ENCOURAGED and EDUCATED by their PEERS and both these groups could be ASSISTED to learn the most important facts by their TEACHERS. To act on this simple insight, which comes from talking to students we know, SAFE NEPAL is aiming to develop programs for schoolchildren with the help of forward-thinking students from our schools and colleges. FIND THE PEERS, TRAIN THEM, ASSIST THEM AND ENCOURAGE THEM TO ACT!