Many of the existing HIV health messages are incorrect or fear-based which can lead to increased stigma and discrimination towards those infected with the virus. In Sierra Leone, billboard posters still portray captions such as 'HIV KILLS' and 'HIV can get you totally wasted' and as a result access to free testing and treatment facilities remains low and many people living with HIV are scared to disclose their status.
One of the Christian Aid priorities for 2009 is promotion of the S.A.V.E message (Safer practises; Available medication; Voluntary counselling and testing; Empowerment through education) which is both holistic and stigma free.
Having been fully briefed, we set to work with The National Network of HIV Positives in Sierra Leone (NETHIPS) to begin generating ideas for the new billboard poster design.
Our design had to not only be clear, accurate and informative, but we were challenged by reality of the country's large illiterate population and the high level of information that had to be somehow represented. Not to mention that the design had to be finalised within one afternoon in the blistering heat!
After completing the layout for the design and receiving approval from Christian Aid and everyone at NETHIPS (as well as their family members and other people within their communities) we began the task of painting the design as a mural on the wall of the NETHIPS centre in Freetown.
Before we travelled to Sierra Leone we were offered donations of acrylic paints from Winsor and Newton and Liquitex, and paper from Paperback (thank you!)
We finished up painting the new billboard design in a couple of days. Then we took photos of the new work and presented them to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Freetown. From here we got the department to replace all government billboard posters which promote stigmatising messages with our new design.
The second half of the project involved travelling to the remote village of Jendema on the border with Liberia. Jendema was a particularly hard hit area during the Sierra Leone civil war and is a very impoverished small village. We were there to continue working with our SAVE design by talking with locals to see if our design could have the same impact as it did in Freetown.
Yoki from Jendema's community centre helped us present our design to the people there and we received some great feedback.
Helped out by a bunch of enthusiastic school kids we set to work painting parts of the design in and around the community centre.
On returning to the UK we were informed that Ernest Bai Koroma, The President of Sierra Leone had personally endorsed our new design and it will not only be distributed onto billboards in Freetown, but across all the country's provinces. And to add to that, Christian Aid are hoping to use the design in all of their 'SAVE' participating countries.
