Happy New Year!

I haven't written in a while because not much was happening at work. Actually all of the government offices shut down from Christmas Eve until today so even if I had gone to work I wouldn't have had anyone to work with. Well, the hospital and the prison were still functioning but not at full capacity.

I just found out that the grant that I applied for last month was accepted for the full amount. : ) This is great news since we're scheduled to hold the training at the end of this month. I'm really excited to see this project come to life. I hope that the nurses who are participating enjoy the training and are able to use the information that the facilitators deliver.

The National AIDS Commission asked all the District AIDS Coordinators (DAC) to conduct mapping of all of the HIV/AIDS stakeholders in their respective communities. The Thyolo DAC and I have been working on the mapping for our district since last month. We have the survey ready and we're scheduled to go into the field this week to deliver them to some of the organizations. I found out that Medecins sans Frontieres (and NGO operating in the district) has also completed a mapping of the HIV/AIDS stakeholders in the community. This made me wonder how many other organizations have done a similar task. So I asked the DAC if we could have a district-wide meeting to find out what other organizations have conducted similar mapping activities and any suggestions or resources that could be shared. Hopefully we can have that meeting this month or next.