Dear GYCA members,

Hello once again from Nepal. This is my final blog post wherein I will be talking about the final outcomes of my project, along with the successes and challenges faced throughout. We were aiming to increase the number of youngsters having right information about peer-pressure, drug use and HIV and AIDS and empowering young Nepalese to prevent and not be a part of peer pressure driving the vicious cycle of drug use and HIV through extensive participation with collaboration and partnership with school administration, parents, management committees and other civic organizations.

We were able to reach 370 youngsters with the right information among which 75% showed raised awareness level in the post-test survey. We also performed various activities successfully to empower them. A number of cases dealt by the students after taking the sessions, within the reporting period is an indicator of the real empowerment and change created by the project.

Having constant requests to conduct more sessions by youngsters, schools and parents was very encouraging and so was the support from other civil society organizations. We were able to not just meet all of our preset targets of all indicators but rather over achieve some of them. That’s another angle added up to the success of the project.

We had to face some challenges but we did not let any of them hinder the smooth running of project activities. For example, when there was risk of delay of printing the IEC materials due to power cut-off, we paid extra and got it printed using generator. Session-breaks in the entire nations which happened to coincide with the first half of the project could be a huge hindrance had we not carried out contingency planning and conducted community based sessions, rather than school-based ones for that period.

Although the journey was not easy, I enjoyed each and every step of the project to its fullest. It was a great way of actually putting ideas into practice and observing what works, what does not and what could be modified to make it more efficient and effective. While talking about sustainability, the project activities could be scaled up to different parts of the country, provided that extra fund is available. Even if this cannot materialize soon, we have effectively handed over the project activities to the students of different schools and briefed them on its continuation. S, the sustainability is ensured to a large extend. The immense support and cooperation form the parents and teachers only adds up to this reliability. And I believe that the project activities shall continue to make a difference in the lives of thousands of young Nepalese adolescents around Nepal.

Lastly, I would like to thank GYCA for providing me this opportunity to translate my vision into reality and you all for following the blog posts and sending me your comments and suggestions.

Thank you, and Bye!
-Vinita

Completing the 'Our Chances with HIV II' project was a great experience of the challenges of Project management. We faced challenges ranging from the respect of timeliness, maintaining HIV confidentiality rules and working with partners.

Let me share one experience with you here. When GYCA announce our award in late January,it was good news because our project was planned for January to June 2010. However, things were not that smooth when we realized GYCA could not provide the funds until mid February. Waiting till the funds were available meant we will miss important date on our Plan of action especially the National Youth Week which runs from February 1 - 10.

We therefore had to look for alternatives means of funding. There was no liquid money in our account so we had to go for a micro-finance loan.

The risk with taking a micro finance to pre-finance a project is paying the interest on loan when it was not budgeted in the plan of action. We were lucky that the late transfer of funds coincided with a risen currency exchange rate. the surplus from the currency exchange was thus used to pay the interest on the micro finance loan.

What if the exchange rate didn't work in our favor? It is therefore advisable that project managers should always keep in mind that they might need a supplementary source of funds to pre-finance activities in the case of eventual delay in funding.

Dear GYCA members,

Greetings from the beautiful land of Nepal. This is my fourth blog post wherein I want to share with you the adjustments made for the success of my project “Promoting awareness and empowerment in Nepalese adolescents on HIV and AIDS and drug use".

I had heard somewhere that turning every challenge into an opportunity is the true prerequisite for success and with great pleasure, I can say that my project has done that.

Here is a brief account of the adjustments we made to make the project a success and more valuable to the community

1.Location
The plan originally was to carry out awareness raising sessions in schools. However, the project period clashed with that of the session-end break in the entire country. So, for the initial 4 sessions, a local community hall was arranged and project activities were conducted therein. The last 2 sessions, however, were conducted in schools.

2.Postponing sessions to be carried out of Kathmandu
Even though we had problem carrying out session in schools in Kathmandu, we wanted to do so in Kaski district which is why we postponed the project to the third week of April, when the schools reopen for new session.

3.Coverage and diversity
The session break turned to be a ‘blessing in disguise’ for us as the number of students attending the project activities dramatically increased and so did the number of schools they represented. So, the coverage of project activities increased.

4.Reprinting of IEC materials
The number of participants increased by such proportion that we had a very limited number of IEC materials left for the last session. However, the school liked the concept so much that they agreed to support us by providing us photocopies of the pamphlets free of cost which we could distribute to the students.

5.Reach to parents and teachers
The school also asked permission from the team to include the IEC materials in their library and distribute the photocopies to the parents and teachers. Thinking about the huge group of population who could benefit for the information, we agreed to their offer.

I hope my experience will be useful in planning and implementing your own novel projects in future...

Until next time, bye from Vinita!

Alternatives Nepal conducted one day entrepreneurship orientation to the recovering drug users receiving treatment in different rehabilitation centre of Pokhara and to the students of grade 9 and 10 from April 26 to May 12, 2010. Alternatives Nepal with the support of Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GYCA) has been implementing entrepreneurship orientation to the recovering drug users receiving treatment in different rehabilitation centers of Pokhara since last February, 2010. Also alternatives frequently organizes orientation in schools on drugs, HIV and entrepreneurship. The main concept of this project is to reduce the problem of drug abuse and HIV in our society through the entrepreneurship development. The entrepreneurship trainings are facilitated by Samundra Paudel (entrepreneurship development expert) and Sanjeev Raj Neupane (vice president of Alternatives). Mr Krshna Adhikari who was once a drug user but now an established entrepreneur in Pokhara shared his experiences of starting the business and his journey from a drug addict to a successful entrepreneur. The recovering drug users who were receiving treatment in the rehabilitation center were highly influenced by the sharing of Mr Adhikari. They promised that one day they will also be a successful entrepreneur and will never ever think of drugs after completing their treatment.
“I will also start a small scale enterprise after I complete the drug treatment course and will make my recovery strong” shared Mr Bikash Gurung who is currently receiving treatment in Naulo Ghumti rehabilitation center of Pokhara.

In schools the presentations consisted of basic introduction of drugs and HIV, the cycle of drug abuse and the meaning and concept of entrepreneurship. In school presentations most of the students were interested to know about the drug use cycle and the concept of entrepreneurship. After knowing the cycle of drug abuse and how difficult it is to get out of the vicious cycle once someone get addicted, students have promised that they will never take drugs. “Say No to drugs, be a hero” was the main theme of our presentation to the school students.

In the past one month I remained very busy with GYCA activities. I had to conduct orientation on HIV and entrepreneurship in schools and also I had to conduct orientation on rehabilitation centers on entrepreneurship. On last one month I was able to reach six more schools and provided orientation to the students of grade 8 and 9 about drugs, HIV and entrepreneurship. The one day orientation programs in schools were divided in two sessions; the first half of the programme comprised of the general introduction of HIV, general introduction of drug abuse, the cycle of drug abuse, how to say no to drugs and consequences of drug abuse. The main objective of this first session was to provide as much knowledge as possible to the students about HIV and drugs so that they always remain far from drugs and other high risk behaviors. Similarly on second half of the orientation programe we provided orientation to the students about what entrepreneurship actually mean, what are the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur and how to be an entrepreneur. For conducting orientation on drugs and HIV I was accompanied by a friend of mine who is a recovering drug user himself and has been working in a HIV/AIDS project since last ten years. Similarly another activity of this project was to provide orientation about entrepreneurship to the recovering drug users receiving treatment in rehabilitation centers. The main objective of this orientation was to help drug users to become an entrepreneur after completing their drug treatment. If the drug users become entrepreneur it will automatically keep them away from drugs and makes their recovery strong. In last one month, we reached three rehabilitation centers. We gave presentation to the recovering drug users receiving treatment in the centers about; what entrepreneurship is, what it actually mean, characteristics of a successful entrepreneur and how can we become an entrepreneur. We had very nice discussions with the recovering drug users. It was surprising to listen to some of the drug users past experience that though they wanted to start their own small scale business their own family didn’t support them because the family won’t believe on them. Also it was surprising to know that some even started to take drugs because of failure in their business. The orientation on rehabilitation centers was very useful for us as well. We also got to learn a lot from the experiences of recovering drug users.


The main difficulty we faced in past one month was arranging time with schools and the rehabilitation centers. The schools had their final exams within a week so we had much difficulty in getting time from them but despite the problem some schools arranged time on our request and we conducted the activities on those schools. Also due to the problem of load shedding we had problem in slide show. However despite all these problems the program was a great success. And we had been successful in explaining to our beneficiaries about the risk of drug use and HIV and role of entrepreneurship.