Fine-tuning the plan to share HEAIDS results
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 11:20 | 
Communication will move into high gear over the next few months as the outcomes of various projects will be shared with institutions and other stakeholders. In order to prepare for this, HEAIDS convened a national meeting of HIV/AIDS co-ordinators and corporate communications managers from institutions countrywide. Fifty delegates representing all 23 HEIs attended the workshop at the end of March.
The meeting served to:
- Bring institutional representatives up to speed with progress on the various HEAIDS projects.
- Share with them a proposed communication strategy for HEAIDS and see how this would support their needs.
- Critique a communication guide, which focuses on communication for behaviour change and is intended to help campuses run effective HIV/AIDS campaigns.
- Invite institutions that have run good campaigns to contribute their success stories to the guide.
Interviews undertaken at several institutions before this workshop indicated a need for HEAIDS to engage face-to-face with a wider range of decision-makers and managers on campuses.
These suggestions were taken into consideration in the drafting of the communication strategy, which now places a stronger emphasis on HEAIDS reaching this audience both face-to-face and through more regular written communication.
The workshop helped to ensure that HEAIDS and institutional communicators and HIV and AIDS co-ordinators were on the same page, and that the different role-players in the communication chain knew what they could do to support effective communication.
