Bame's Story
Bame grew up in a single parent home where her mum struggled to survive with four daughters to provide for. She attends Bokamoso Junior Secondary School in Gaborone, Botswana. When she was 13, the HOPEHIV-funded GoLD peer education programme came to her school and to her surprise her peers identified her as an influential leader and voted for her. Their faith helped her to believe in herself and she became the only junior to enter the National Miss Youth Ambassador Competition winning 3rd place.
Bame is now 15 and told us that the opportunity to spend time with other motivated young people has made all the difference to the path she took. She identified the main problems in her school as social isolation for orphans, teenage pregnancy, and alcohol and drug abuse leading to high drop-out rates. Bame's role model is her mum and her dream is to become a social worker and give back to her community.
"I want to thank GoLD and HOPEHIV as without this programme I would probably be abusing alcohol now."
Make their story your story
Through HOPEHIV, the GoLD model has been taken into some of the poorest parts of South Africa and also pioneered in Gaborone, Botswana. Government health and education ministries have endorsed the program and significant reductions in new adolescent HIV infections and teenage pregnancies as well as an increased number of community initiatives have been recorded. Significant funding has been secured through the U.S. government to roll out this program even further. In time, HOPEHIV plan to take this impressive program into new African countries both in and out of the school setting.
£10 a month will help us train another peer educator like Bame to make a difference. DONATE NOW.
Read more about peer education.