02 Jun 2015

Former president, Sir Ketumile Masire, says the school of discipleship of the Face the Nation (FTN) HIV/AIDS faith based intervention programme of the Open Baptist Church (OBC) of Gaborone has over the past 10 years trained 903 peer educators in Botswana.

Speaking at the 10th anniversary of the peer educator dinner on Saturday (May 30), Sir Ketumile, who is also FTN patron, said the church leadership approached him in 2007 to become the patron of their movement and he did not hesitate because the issue of HIV/AIDS was of concern and importance to him.

“The concern is because HIV/AIDS became an international issue in the early years of my presidency; and from the information available to us, we regarded it as a purely health issue,” he said.

He indicated that resources were then committed to combat the pandemic as it affected Botswana but like some government programmes, there were unintended and inadvertent developments which arose from the efforts of government.

“These developments included, but were not limited to, social issues like the care of orphans and modes of inculcating discipline in the young generation of Batswana to enable them make right choices and be wholesome in their relationships,” said the former president.

He said it became obvious that problems could not be tackled by government alone and other stakeholders outside government had to be involved, hence one such stakeholder naturally happened to be the faith-based organisations.

“The uniqueness of FTN is the use of peer-education method as a largely-unexplored new-generation HIV/AIDS prevention initiative, which confers adequate level of personal control over emotions and peer pressure. It is therefore not surprising that over its 10 years of operation, FTN has reached about 270 000 youth in Botswana with life-skill message anchored on the Christian belief of sexual relationships within the confines of marriage,” he said.

He further said out of the 270 000 youth, 44 162 youth in Botswana between the ages of 15-19 years pledged commitment to abstinence until marriage. “These figures may not be astronomical but in the context of Botswana, with her small population, they are significant,” he said.

The former statesman further commended the leadership of FTN for thinking of the reunion of previously-trained peer educators.

“This reunion is premised on the belief that a strategy worth exploring in the national battle against HIV/AIDS is the engagement and mobilization of skilled human resources. Therefore, harnessing the resource of FTN-trained graduate peer educators in different sectors of the economy presents a viable potential for addressing the HIV/AIDS scourge in our nation,” he said.

Further, he said the granting of five more years of ministry to FTN by the Ministry of Education and Skills Development was proof that government fully supported such an initiative.

“My challenge to FTN is that at the end of five years, let there be no new infections within the age range of 15-19 years, which is your primary focus,” he said, adding that he had been told that the Ministry of Health was also coming on board as a partner. 

Again, he said it was commendable that the bulk of the FTN peer educators trained so far had come from several Christian organisations in Botswana. 

He said recognition of the Open Baptist Church, through FTN, as one of the 10 faith-based organisations actively assisting government in containing the HIV/AIDS pandemic by promoting behavioural changes was another spiritual landmark. Ends