Kicking AIDS Out of the Caribbean with Erasmus Wayne Benti

only just made it to the Kicking AIDS Out Leader Level II workshop, held in the surroundings of Cape Town from 2-6 November. Indeed, the graduate teacher caught the last flight departing from his home country, St. Lucia, before the hurricane Thomas prevented any further flights from leaving the Caribbean Island.

Benti was trained in 2005 as a Kicking AIDS Out leader and has been very instrumental in keeping this movement alive throughout the region. Wayne is currently involved with sport in St. Lucia as a netball, athletic and basketball coach and official.

He is one among a group of more than 20 participants in the workshop, which aims to provide the young leaders with facilitation skills, enabling them to effectively combine sport and HIV/AIDS education upon returning to their communities.

Enhancing facilitation skills
The graduate teacher sees certain nuances between facilitating and teaching: "I believe teaching is about giving, providing a message, whereas facilitating is more about drawing from people’s experiences and learning from one another."

Accordingly, the five-day workshop organised by the Kicking AIDS Out network represents a great opportunity for these young leaders to share their experiences and be confronted to different facilitation styles and techniques.

"The beauty of the network"
Kicking AIDS Out is an international network of sport for development NGOs, organisations and national sports structures. These gatherings enable staff members from the member organisations to mingle, share their experiences and acquire new skills.

For Wayne, these meetings are crucial for the dissemination of the Kicking AIDS Out philosophy: "whenever we meet and receive training, we’re already thinking about returning to our communities and implementing these new skills. We now have five trained staff in the Caribbean, and this meeting entitles me to train even more KAO leaders. The process of receiving and then providing the training in my community is the beauty of this network."

In the global AIDS pandemic, the Caribbean is the second-most affected region in the world after sub-Saharan Africa. Expanding Kicking AIDS Out activities in the region is thus a priority for Wayne, and in his mind there is no doubt that sport is an effective vehicle to address this challenge: "sport is a great avenue to get children to come along and be together. If we plan discussions about safe sex, or HIV/AIDS education, they won’t turn up. But they will come to play, and we can then easily combine health messages with these activities."

For more information:

• Read another article about leaders from the Caribbean taking part in this workshop
• Read about other programmes utilising sport to tackle HIV/AIDS