By Piya Sorcar, CEO of TeachAIDS

Blog column

Botswana recently celebrated a remarkable milestone in its fight against HIV and AIDS. Botswana has long been a leader in these efforts, and on Friday, June 15, 2012, they marked their inaugural "TeachAIDS Day": a call to action to recommit themselves and promote HIV education amongst its citizens.

Here's how it started. A few years ago, Botswana's Ministry of Education reached out to TeachAIDS, which had recently spun out of Stanford University as a nonprofit, to tackle the issue of "HIV fatigue". More than one-fifth of adults in Botswana are HIV positive, and their citizens had grown tired of the repetitive HIV messaging through billboards, television commercials, and pamphlets. Research also demonstrated that the fragmented messaging was ineffective at providing a fundamental understanding of the basics of HIV transmission.

The new initiative -- to provide more engaging and also more effective HIV education --brought together key players like UNICEF and Stepping Stones International, along with Barclays, Yahoo!, and others. The resulting localized and culturally-appropriate TeachAIDS software featured the voices of national celebrities Scar, Zeus, Tref, and Jazzelle. Both male and female versions of the research-based, interactive software were produced in English and Setswana, the country's official languages. The use of software allowed everyone in the country, especially those who were not well-versed in HIV-related issues, to provide consistent, medically-accurate education to all learners.

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