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IU student group educates 30,000 Kenyans about the dangers of AIDS
July 18, 2000
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- While leaders met in South Africa this month to discuss Africa's worsening AIDS epidemic, a group of Indiana University students and alumni did their part to help slow the spread of the deadly disease.
For the third consecutive summer, members of the IU student group Outreach Kenya Development Volunteers traveled to Kenya to educate and raise awareness about the dangers of AIDS. Armed with information and 5,000 condoms, the group set forth to dispel widely accepted local myths about how AIDS spreads and to preach prevention.
Hank Selke, who co-founded the organization in 1998 while studying at IU, recently returned from Kenya and said the last three summers have changed his life.
"My intentions were simple. Travel to Kenya in the summer (1998), do AIDS education programs, return home and apply to medical school," Selke said. "Little did I realize the amount of education that I would receive through my interactions with the local people."
To reach out to the community, the members of OKDV, working with the Kenyan non-governmental organization Inter-Community Development Involvement, present extensive two-to-three-hour HIV/AIDS programs to groups at schools, churches, community centers, bars, night clubs and women's groups across the western province of Kenya. The audiences view HIV/AIDS awareness films and discuss STDs and the origin, transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS.
Since OKDV's inception, Selke and co-founder Philip Roessler, a senior at IU, have funded the organization's initiatives entirely from private donations. Selke estimates the group has reached about 30,000 people in Kenya's western province with less than $7,500 in funding.
Selke said the affection he has received from the people he has met is priceless. "I was moved by the genuine warmth, friendliness and dedication of the people of western Kenya," he said. "They have been the catalyst and motivation for all of this."
(Kevin A. Gray, 812-856-5682, keagray@indiana.edu)