Inter-Act

Inter-Act draws on a variety of strategies to inform and engage truck drivers, facilitating dialogue between them and hopefully shaping their behaviour to break the chain of HIV infection, which they are particularly vulnerable to due to their mobile lifestyle. At the start of the pilot portion of the project, PATH worked with organisations participating in the Avahan Initiative to recruit and train a pilot group of 20 drivers and driving assistants as peer interpersonal communication facilitators. These facilitators underwent a 14-day training course that included a 7-day period of supervised fieldwork. The course sessions were offered on weekends so that participants did not have to miss long periods of work. During the training, experienced facilitators worked with the core group, focusing on skills such as how to generate dialogue and debate about effective risk-reduction strategies and action. Detailed feedback from training sessions was used to shape and strengthen other components of the programme.

This group of truckers went on to work part-time with the project by facilitating interpersonal sessions among their peers during their professional work, as they travel to multiple transportation hubs over wide geographic areas. Focusing on local contexts, these sessions use dialogue-based communication and other methods to elicit critical reflection about prevention barriers such as lack of HIV and STI prevention information, limited access to services, negative community attitudes, and legal obstacles. The facilitators also help participants share and analyse risk reduction techniques, and encourage healthier choices.

Specifically, techniques adapted from participatory learning and action methods are designed to help develop rapport, stimulating dialogue, debate, and collaborative problem-solving. For example, graffiti is used to bring sensitive topics to the table for discussion. Participants sketch sexual practices in which they commonly engage and identify the HIV risk associated with each practice. They then discuss how to make the practices safer. Another drawing-based technique involves the facilitator asking participants to draw a map and indicate the locations where high-risk behaviour is most likely to occur, ranking "spots" by level of risk or number of people at risk; groups then brainstorm ideas for making changes that will reduce risk in these areas. After such a facilitated brainstorming session, small groups form "tableaus" by standing frozen in place to demonstrate ways to reduce HIV risk. Participants are drawn into discussion among themselves and then are engaged in critical thinking about other groups' ideas.

HIV/AIDS.

According to organisers, on the road, migrant drivers and their driving assistants often participate in high-risk behaviours, such as unprotected sex, including unprotected male-to-male sexual practices. Drivers may then transmit infections to wives and girlfriends at home.

PATH explains that truck driving is not a high-status profession, and drivers face the additional stigma of being associated with the spread of HIV. Many truck drivers fear that participating in HIV prevention activities may increase this association, which makes this group particularly difficult to reach. However, the pilot project indicates, according to PATH, that peer facilitators were successful in helping create an environment in which the only distinction is between "safe" and "unsafe" behaviours - not between "good" and "bad" or "right" and "wrong". They point to the training programme's high retention rate and the fact that many truck drivers who heard about the project volunteered to participate on their own initiative as evidence of the success of this peer education strategy.

PATH indicates that, as an increasingly large pool of trained peer facilitators sign up for assignments, Avahan partners will reach more than 63,000 truck drivers and assistants each month, reaching a total population of more than 1.5 million.