By Brenna Matendere
A cohort of girls who formed a sister-to-sister group of a dish wash liquid manufacturing club witnessed by journalists during a media tour in May have graduated and entered into society to change lives.
In a follow up interview, National Aids Council’s District Aids Coordinator (DAC) Admire Takawira confirmed the development saying six months after the media tour, the programme had emerged as one of the best in the district.
“First of all I would like to say that after the media tour, the club of girls had rich pickings from their dish washing business because the enterprise got a lot of marketing and sales shot up.
“On the other hand, our objective of taking the girls out of HIV hot spots and removing them from high risks areas was achieved because they got something to show for not engaging into things like sex work.
“The girls have since graduated and I am hopeful that when HIV statistics for Karoi are released for the year ending, we are going to see a lot of positives,” he said.
The latest known HIV prevalence for Karoi is 11 percent. In Mashonaland West, it is slightly higher than Kariba which has 9 percent but relatively lower than other areas such as Mhondoro (14 percent) Chegutu (13 percent) Zvimba (12.6 percent) and Makonde (12 percent).
Takawira highlighted that he was confident the girls who graduated would be torch bearers in society.
“They did well both in understanding the lessons taught and the essence of self help projects for young girls in light of fighting new HIV infections that can easily take place when female adolescents are idle,” he said.
The club of the girls was known as Queen of the universe. It operated under the mentorship of Mavis Tagarira in Karoi’s Chikangwe township.
The club consisted of out of school girls and young women identified through a risk assessment exercise that targeted adolescents at risk of new HIV infections.
By being kept occupied with economically empowering activities, Nac hoped to remove them away from HIV dangers such as intergenerational sex and multiple concurrent partners.
Ester Mupariwa and Cecilia Mhande who were part of the club, told this publication after graduating, they believe they are out of the woods.
“We went through the paces for 12 months learning all that we need to know about HIV prevention and on top of that, how else to make money away from commercial sex work. That knowledge will stick on my mind and going forward I will recruit dozens of girls and mentor them myself,” said Mupariwa.
Mhande said some of her friends already have two or more children with different fathers and might now be in danger of HIV infection but she is free from the pandemic because she joined the sister to sister club.
She said will use the experience she gained to inspire other girls now that she has graduated from the club.
Both Mupariwa and Mhande said they were taught well enough on the sidelines of their dish washing liquid.
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