Penyinar:
BDAC youth division

By Liyana Imani Abdul Latif

Brunei Darussalam AIDS Council (BDAC) was established in the year 2000 to assist in educating and creating awareness amongst every individual in Brunei Darussalam about HIV/AIDS, all prevention methods possible, and to assist those infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Along with our youth division, Penyinar, we have faced many levels of challenges in terms of reaching out to the public in our ways of educating the population with healthy and responsible lifestyle choices. These challenges are such as running on a small budget and correcting the conflicting ideas and misperception that HIV/AIDS is not a huge problem.

However, BDAC and Penyinar's strongest point has always been their confidence in tackling challenges and presenting our ideas. Both divisions and members work together as a great team as this can be highlighted in our achievements, namely, us winning awards such as the Commonwealth Youth Silver Award 2005/2006 and 2009/2007, the Meritorious Youth Leader Award for our president Datin Hjh Edah Hj Mohd Noor in conjunction with the National Youth Day 2007 and most recently the ASEAN Youth Award 2009. We are also constantly working with the private sector and government agencies on event collaborations; we value the help we get from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports.

We have a number of successful projects and events, namely, HAPPY (HIV Awareness Programme for Peers and Youth), leaflet trails, Penyinar club, LESTARI (Life skills training), and among events that I have chaired myself; World AIDS Day Mini Concert 2007, Walk for Life and Walk the Talk Walkathon.

We will mark this year's World Aids Day with an 80km bicycle tour around Bandar Seri Begawan on December 27, 2009. This will be a different challenge altogether for me as the chairperson of this year's World AIDS Day event - as I am still learning the ropes of planning a cycling tour as we prepare for this event. We hope to mark this year's World Aids Day with a ride that can challenge and reward the participants, and make this event memorable as cyclists will be riding for a cause.

One of the objectives of this tour is to raise awareness and knowledge of HIV/AIDS and to promote a healthy lifestyle among participants, volunteers, sponsors as well as the general public.

I'd also like to highlight the fact that every event we work on brings all members of BDAC and Penyinar Club closer and we are fortunate to have been able to create and design life skills programmes and projects for our members and volunteers. This proves to be an advantage to Penyinar Club members as they are all groomed to become successful and important individuals - most of them are away studying on scholarships and others are doing very well in the society. The programmes that we are able to run with the help of sponsors to fund our ideas are a boost in the academic achievements and "networks" and we are also very fortunate to have the support of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports to recognise our hard work and reward us with the opportunity to learn and see how things in other countries work by attending forums, symposiums and courses.

Our future vision and events concern educating more members of the society and engaging teachers and parents whom we'd like to encourage to see the importance of sharing responsibility in developing healthy lifestyle choices. We also hope to see the implementation of comprehensive family life education, which adapts to the Bruneian lifestyle and society.

Our President, Datin Hjh Edah Hj Mohd Noor, believes that we are well on the right track in all the projects and events that we do though we share the same concerns that we can actually do more and provide more impact but we are restricted as we are limited in funding. However, we are doing the best we can. We rely on donations and sponsorships to run our organisation and we wish to be more resourceful; we would appreciate it very much if we were given a helping hand in terms of financial help.

The goodwill and awareness that companies and organisations receive from helping the Brunei Darussalam AIDS Council will definitely benefit them in terms of publicity and at the same time we, in turn, will benefit from their sponsorship.

This year's World Aids Day theme is 'Universal Access, Human Rights'.

(Liyana Imani Abdul Latif is the chairperson of World Aids Day 'HIV Awareness Tour Bicycle Ride' on December 27, 2009 and the Secretary I for BDAC. She can be contacted at liyana.latif@gmail.com.)