Related Projects
The Girl-Child within Refugee and Immigrant Communities in Montreal: An Exploration of Sexuality and Human Security
Our specific focus in this project is on issues of sexuality in the lives of girls in refugee communities in Montreal. The work on sexuality in a Western context within the framework of popular culture has paid little attention to the lives of girls who are outside the mainstream culture. Even more significantly, we know very little about the ways in which the links between the lives of girls and women, daughters and mothers, girls and their female teachers might contribute to understanding issues of the girl-child. Finally, as (adult) researchers, we have a great deal to learn about how best to work with young people in studying sexuality. How, for example, can girls become partners in co-researching in studying their own lives? How can mothers participate in some of this exploration through memory work? How can we look at participatory process in a "research as social change" context?
Score! A one-hour Television Documentary about the Shosholozas Soccer Team
Score! is a documentary about Gethwana Makhaye and her youth soccer group called the Shosholozas. In 1997, this former nurse from the Kwazulu-Natal province single handedly developed the Shosholoza AIDS Project to grapple with the issue of unprotected sex among teens. What makes the Project's approach unique is that it involves young South African male soccer players educating their peers about condom use and AIDS.
From the very first scene, SCORE! draws us into the hectic life of Gethwana and her team. We watch Gethwana as she trains two new recruits to become peer counselors and prepares the rest of the Shosholozas to promote their safe-sex message through theater performances and soccer matches. At the same time, we follow our female protagonist as she organizes for an upcoming rip with the Shosholozas to a conference on youth and AIDS in Canada.
Gethwana knows that when the crucial moment arrives, too many adolescents are ignoring the messages about safe sex that they are bombarded with at school and in the media. These youth however look up to local soccer stars as cool, sexy role models. With this in mind, Gethwana saw soccer players as effective voices for social change. And so, the Shosholozas use soccer, theater, T-shirts, and humor to instigate candid discussions about sex and AIDS in over a dozen soccer teams.
Score! deals with the complexities of what seems, on the surface, to be straightforward recipe for HIV/AIDS prevention: "wear a condom!". We see that in reality it's not that simple. For instance:
- Most guys think that real men don't wear condoms. They don't want to wear one.
- No matter how verbal and frank they may be in locker room talk or with their friends, when the time for sex with a partner actually arrives, many guys and girls are too uncomfortable or reluctant to talk about sexually transmitted diseases. They want to be viewed as sexy partners. Neither may want to break the mood.
-When a girl asks a guy to wear a condom, it is often taken to mean she has had other sexual partners, that she is a slut. Asking him to wear a condom can be risky. There are too many stories of girls being raped or beaten up for asking.
Opening Our Eyes: Addressing Gender-based Violence in South African Schools
Opening Our Eyes: Addressing Gender-based Violence in South African Schools - A Module for Educators is a school-based project developed within the gender programming of the Canada South Africa Education Management Programme designed to give educators, school management teams (and learners in upper secondary school), practical tools for working around issues of sexual harassment, homophobia, child abuse, the relationship between gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS, and healing. Each workshop includes a background paper followed by an outline of highly participatory activities for use in workshops. Workshopped in 3 provinces in South Africa, Free State, Mpumalanga and Gauteng, the module has been pilot tested in a number of districts and schools.
The module was developed by a team of writers in Canada, South Africa and Australia: Olly Mlamleli is Gender Director of the Office of the Status of Women in Free State province having previously worked through the Free State Department of Education as the School Management Developer and Gender Focal Person; Vernet Napo is a policy analyst and project evaluator for the Centre for Education Policy Development in Braamfontein; Pontsho Mabelane is the Director of Culture and Language, in the Department of Sport, Recreation, Art, and Culture in Mpumalanga; Valerie Free has worked as an adult education instructor, teaching literacy and English as a Second Language to immigrants and international students, in urban and rural settings; With a background in teaching, Micheal Goodman is the Publishing Manager at Macmillan, which publishes educational books for Southern Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland; June Larkin is the undergraduate coordinator of Women's Studies at the Institute for Women's Gender Studies and the director of Equity Studies at the University of Toronto; Claudia Mitchell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education of McGill University where she teaches courses in literacy, gender and research methodology; Hlengiwe Mkhize is a Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, specifically the Chair of the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee; Kerry Robinson is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and Early Childhood Studies and the University of Western Sydney, Australia; Ann Smith teaches in the English Department at the University of Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, in the School of Literature and Language.
Canadian Women Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme
"Women and HIV/AIDS" Winter 2002 (Vol. 21, No. 2)
CWS/cf"s Winter 2002 issue raises awareness about the prevention, education, treatment, support, and care for women at risk and women living with HIV/AIDS across the country, as well as examining HIV/AIDS in the global context. HIV/AIDS is, in fact, fast becoming a global crisis and women, worldwide, are among the most vulnerable. In Canada, the proportion of AIDS cases among women is on rise, and very recently (as Health Canada reported), the percentage of positive HIV tests among females has risen sharply. We feel that it is extremely important to sensitize the Canadian public to the fact that women, both in the industrialized and in the developing world, are now considered to be the population most at risk for HIV infection. To date, however, there are very few Canadian resources that deal specifically with issues related to gender and HIV infection in Canada. This volume will identify key issues that impact on women"s vulnerability to HIV infection such as the way in which women"s poverty, as well as violence against women, puts women at risk, and if they have already contracted the infection, affects their ability to access the necessary treatment, support, and care. More importantly, this issue will begin the process of articulating changes lives increase Canadian women"s understanding of their susceptibility to infection, their overall education about the risk factors for HIV/AIDS, methods of prevention, and the strategies needed for appropriate treatment, support, and care.
Read some articles published in this issue by the GAAP team members.