AIDS Badge curriculum

The AIDS Badge Curriculum is an important WAGGGS project, undertaken in partnership with ICASO and UNAIDS. The AIDS badge helps girls and young women to learn about HIV and AIDS by doing a number of activities especially designed for the age ranges within Girl Guiding/Girl Scouting.

Earning the AIDS Badge

The activities form a challenging curriculum that addresses the following aspects of HIV and AIDS awareness:

Prevention through change in behaviour Girl Guides/Girl Scouts demonstrate that they understand some of the ways in which HIV is transmitted (and therefore can be prevented) and that they have disseminated that information successfully to their peers.
Discrimination. Girl Guides/Girl Scouts successfully complete a task that educates others as well as themselves about the facts on HIV and AIDS, with the aim of eliminating discrimination.
Care and support. Girl Guides/Girl Scouts learn how to care for and support members of their community who are living with HIV/AIDS. This will include caring for and supporting Girl Guides/Girl Scouts who are living with HIV and AIDS.

To earn a badge, complete six activities including at least one fundraising activity. You can purchase fabric badges from our shop.

Age Range: 10 years to 15 years

Examples of activities:

Age 10 to 12 years:

Make a picture poster of activities you can do safely with a person who has HIV and AIDS. Include the following:

Activities with friends
Activities in school
Activities at home

Share your poster with your group, family and friends. Ask them to add activities to your poster.

Age 13 to 15 years:

Discuss prejudice with your group. To start, think of these issues:

What is prejudice?
Have you ever felt someone was prejudiced against you? Why? Your age, religion, the colour of your skin, other reasons? How did you feel?
List differences people have that other people have prejudices about. Include having HIV and AIDS.
How could you respond when you hear someone calling someone a bad name because they are different to them?

Share some of your ideas with your group. Discuss and come up with strategies together to be better prepared to respond to prejudice – directed at yourselves or others. Rehearse together by doing role plays.

HIV and AIDS facts

In 2007, around 2.5 million people were newly infected with HIV and 2.1 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses.
Half of the new infections are among young people aged 15 to 24 years old. Today, 12 million young people are living with HIV and AIDS and 6,000 are infected daily – one every 15 seconds. (UNAIDS and the World Assembly of Youth Statement on World AIDS Day, December 2006).
Women and young girls are more vulnerable to contracting the virus because of the way their bodies are built. Also, because of gender inequality in many countries women have limited power.
The average number of years that people living with HIV are estimated to survive without treatment has been increased from nine to 11 years.
People living with HIV are at a much greater risk of developing deadly diseases like tuberculosis. HIV is responsible for high tuberculosis infection rates.

Source: (UNAIDS 2007)

The Badge partners

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) was a joint venture in the United Nations family. It worked by pooling the experience, efforts and resources of seven organizations:

UNAIDS also collaborates with other partners, including NGOs, the private sector and religious organizations at global, regional and national levels.

UNAIDS is the main advocate for global action on HIV and AIDS working to prevent the transmission of HIV, provide care and support, reduce of the vulnerability of individuals and communities to HIV and AIDS and alleviate the impact of the epidemic.

The International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO) works through a networking process that seeks to strengthen networking at a national level. Developing partnerships and collaborative initiatives between civil society organizations is essential to broaden the impact of our respective activities. ICASO has experience and expertise in developing, implementing and evaluating HIV/AIDS programmes at the global level.

Useful links

Need help? Contact development@wagggsworld.org

Suggestions: If you have completed this badge, why not try the GAT Badge curriculum.

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