Peer educators enjoy HIV/Aids presentation
The annual Peer Educators Day 2016 was held in a boardroom at the Impala Human Resource Department in Cowles Road, Rowhill last Thursday.
Pule de Roland-Phillips, chairman of the Health and Wellness in the Workplace Forum of the Eastern Gauteng Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has been organising these events for the past seven years.
“I am in the field of adult education of health and wellness issues,” she says.
The forum provides a platform for health and wellness peer educators of all member companies to further their knowledge on health matters.
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Pule says the peer educators also network with one another with regard to their volunteer roles and responsibilities as educators in their various companies.
Thirty peer educators from Gold One, Impala, Cobra Water Tech and PFG, as well as members of the Ekurhuleni Metro Men’s Forum and Brothers for Life, were present.
Both the Ekurhuleni Metro Men’s Forum and Brothers for Life are organisations that advocate non-violence against women and children.
“The task of the educators is to educate people in their companies on wellness and health, violence and social issue,” says Pule.
She encourages all companies to implement a peer educators programme in their workplace so that the employees and their community can educate other employees on health, wellness and social issues.
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With HIV/Aids as the topic of this year’s event, all of the peer educators enjoyed the presentation by Thabiso Peo, metro director of the HIV/Aids unit.
He mentioned the metro is focusing on people who are most highly infected, which includes the age group 18 to 24 years.
“It is the most fertile years where transactional sex takes place and it is found mostly among university and college students,” he says.
According to metro statistics, the estimated number of new infections per week proved, among women aged between 15 and 24 years in East and southern Africa, that South Africa is rated the highest with 2 363. Uganda is second with only 570 new cases per week.
Mogale Mashiabatha from Brothers of Life said everyone should play a role in their personal, professional and leadership capacities to stop rape of all kinds, as well as sexual violence, killing and abuse of women and children, domestic violence, and abuse and violations of people with disabilities.
“We want men to express our collective condemnation of these acts of violence perpetrated in our communities,” says Mogale.
