Working with HIV infected women at the foundation

 Part of the research I am doing at the university includes working with HIV infected women at a nearby foundation. My research group is particularly working on projects with two different foundations, one of which is a social support project for HIV-infected women at a foundation named VIDA, SALUD, y BIENESTAR (translated as LIFE, HEALTH, and WELLBEING) . The goal of this social support project is to provide women with different HIV-related topics of discussion, including sexual, psychological, biological, and social topics.

When I first was told about the social support group, one of the research members asked me to some sort of workshop/presentation. Because she knew that I was a Biology major (kinda cool to hear her call me an official "Biologist" hehe), she had asked me to organize a presentation about HIV from a biological perspective. The thought of me doing this was PRETTY EXCITING, considering it was something I had never been asked to do.

As I thought about what to discuss in the workshop, I ran into two main problems. First, because HIV is such a complex virus, I had to try to explain HIV from a VERY BASIC biological perspective. Second, considering that learned mostly all of my biological knowledge in ENGLISH, I also had to try to explain HIV in SPANISH.

After thinking about how I would go about organizing the presentation, I decided I would focus on the topic of the HIV STRUCTURE and LIFE CYCLE. I decided I would do an opening activity, a presentation of the actual discussion, and an ending activity.

In the first activity, I would give the women a poster board so that they could DRAW OUT what they knew about HIV structure/life cycle. These are a few pics from the first activity:



















In the last activity, I decided to create a GAME OF MEMORY, where the women would try to recall/match some technical HIV information with its defintion. For example, one pair of cards would say "THE CELLS THAT HIV INFECTS" and its match would say "CD4 CELLS". I individually created these cards, totalling about 15 different pairs of cards that the women were expected to match up.

As for my presentation, I decided to use an illustration of the HIV structure/life cycle that I had found on youtube. This was a great presentation, because it was very basic and clear. I was able to pause at different times during the illustration and talk about each phase of the life cycle. Here is a pic of me IN ACTION:

(Don't ask what my face was doing..)













Overall, I felt that the activities went well. The women had a fair understanding of HIV, had great questions to ask, and participated throughout the entire length of the workshop. They said that the workshop did help them understand, which was shocking considering my level of technical Spanish...

 This workshop could not have ended MORE PERFECTLY... to our surprise, one of the directors of the foundation had brought a big CAKE to celebrate several people's birthdays (belated and upcoming). To my surpise, my birthday was a only week away! I was sooon blowing that candle away, with the rest of the "CUMPLENERAS" (aka birthday celebraters hehe).

(Just in case you are wondering, the cake was delicious! It was a vanilla cake with a strawberry sauce. We topped it off with some Coca Cola :))