Chinese NGO explores new mode of AIDS prevention education

The Base

Besides sponsoring Youth Love Cabins, APEPCY has also built up 11 Youth Love Bases in the country over the last decade, which offer training and liaison opportunities

The first was at Chengdu University, Sichuan Province, in 2009.

Gou Ping, director of the Sichuan Base and a psychology professor at Chengdu Normal University, said the base not only trained teachers but has supported teaching and research teams to promote sex education in schools.

In 2014, 20 sex education minor students from the university went to Yingjiang to teach classes. The course has recruited six grades of students and trained over 200 professional sex education teachers.

"We found that the sex education bias is huge," said Gou, "Therefore, we are thankful that APEPCY gave us a reason to research sex education through the entry point of HIV/AIDS prevention."

Wang Zuoshu, vice chairman of the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee of the National People's Congress, said sex education will benefit future generations.

He believes there are challenges ahead, such as constraints due to Chinese culture, as well as lack of funds, teachers and text books.

But president Zhang Yinjun has a clear vision. She said APEPCY will be more focused, innovative and mobilize more domestic and international forces in the future, to combine the experiences it has accumulated in ten years to better serve schools and institutions who wish to carry out HIV/AIDS prevention and sex education.

"APEPCY need more domestic and international support to communicate our ideas, letting more people join the HIV/AIDS prevention drive to ultimately realize the global zero AIDS goal," she said.