Standard Chartered trains HIV Super-champions in Lincoln Community School

May, Accra – Standard Chartered Bank has successfully trained 20 student and three teachers of the Lincoln Community School (LCS) in Accra as HIV ‘super champions’ to help in their HIV awareness creation efforts.

The SCB team, including Woelinam Dogbe, Estelle Djan and Kingsley Duah-Antwi and Sanjay Rughani, Executive Director, Finance of the Bank, facilitated engaging sessions on two separate days to train the students as effective AIDs educators.

Moving away from the simple presentation of facts and figures on HIV and AIDS, the super-champions were introduced to ‘best-in-class’ methods of creating awareness, including a series of fun and eye opening activities on HIV transmission, lifestyle choices, ARVs, condom use, and voluntary counselling and testing.

Commenting, Sanjay Rughani, SCB’s Executive Director of Finance and Area CFO, said: “Partnering with students to fight HIV/AIDS is a strategic decision to enhance relationships with the world’s future leaders, helping to develop sustainable economies in the communities in which we operate. As the Right Partner, we will leverage our core competencies, and work in partnership with each other, governments, NGOs and Schools, in order to ensure that we win the fight against HIV/AIDS.”

At the end of the session, the excited students provided insightful feedback on the training program:

“From my point view I think the training session was really good because it enabled many of us to learn about HIV/Aids.. Before I didn’t have a very good knowledge about the different means by which one could contract the virus and the disease and now I am proud to say that I am well educated about Aids. I can help people in our society by teaching them about Aids.” – Madina Coulibaly (Grade 11)

“First of all I would like to point out how excited I am to learn more in depth about HIV and AIDS. Coming to the program, I knew the basics about HIV AIDS, after taking the test I realized I had no knowledge about what happens in the immune system, especially the window period and the QQR. With this education, I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t know about AIDS. It was worthwhile for me to take time and study about HIV / AIDS.” - Joel Asamoah (Grade 11)

“One of the other most important things I learnt was the ways of communication that the trainers used; and this is very important because it’s the main key of sharing and spreading the word. Therefore I tried to learn from the ways they were able to make that connection with us, in order to use them when I am trying to educate others. I’m really glad to have attended these sessions because they were extremely interesting, inspiring and beneficial.” - Sherin Kabalan (Grade 11)

“These sessions were extremely informative, and I gained a sufficient amount of knowledge on the topic. Being able to talk to people that have experience and know the subject matter is more rewarding than just reading about it in a book or the internet. These sessions have definitely encouraged me to “be the change I want to see” as Gandhi once said.” - Esther Ohrt (Grade 11)

“Clearly, this was well worth the time spent and as head of the AIDS Education Group, I can assuredly speak on behalf of all the new members in saying that we are very much looking forward to the year ahead and to putting our knowledge into action, here at school and outside in the community.” - Rachael L. Gerbic (Secondary School Counselor and LCS Aids Education Group Leader).

The participants are all members of the LCS Aids Education Group, a group which has been very active this year inside and outside of school, and have committed to further train about 300 students within the next school calendar year. Some of the super-champions are members of the graduating class and are poised to continue their championship efforts in College.

The Bank has committed to the Clinton Global Initiative to educate one million people on HIV/AIDS by 2010. Standard Chartered aims to reach the one-million target by scaling up existing partnerships, including those with customers and suppliers and NGOs.

For more information, please contact:

Nii Okai Nunoo
Area Head of Corporate Affairs, West Africa
Tel: +233(0)21 669688 Fax: +233 (0) 21 661676
Nii-Okai.Nunoo@standardchartered.com