A United Response in the Caribbean

Before she became an education administrator, Glenda Rolle was a schoolteacher in her native Bahamas for 16 years, teaching language arts, family and consumer sciences, and social studies. It was a more innocent time—a time when students’ worries were about things like getting their homework done and making friends. A time before HIV and AIDS became rampant.

As the health crisis grew, both students and teachers living with HIV and AIDS endured the stigma attached to the disease. While their health ministries worked to address the epidemic, Caribbean nations began to take steps toward prevention and countering discrimination. Schools and ministries of education also took on leadership roles by establishing policies, programs, and services to protect teachers and students who might become infected.

Today, as senior education officer and HIV and AIDS coordinator in the Bahamas Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports, and Culture, Glenda Rolle joins forces with other education ministry HIV and AIDS coordinators across the Caribbean. With HHD, they are working to bring about a policy-level and comprehensive whole school response to the HIV and AIDS crisis from the education sector.

The Caribbean Education Sector HIV and AIDS Coordinators Network (EduCan) is the first of its kind. It unites education sector HIV and AIDS coordinators from the different Caribbean islands around developing a comprehensive approach for responding to the HIV and AIDS crisis. With policy as the foundation, this comprehensive response is supported by strategies carried out in partnership with parents and the community—access to counseling and testing services, a school ethos free of discrimination, and a behavior change curriculum that promotes health.

“With a comprehensive approach to address this crisis, we can safeguard young people and education staff in the Caribbean and the economic future of the region,” says Connie Constantine, senior project director at HHD. The ministries, Constantine notes, are in a unique position to create, implement, and enforce policies that guide education officials on how to respond to the threat of HIV and AIDS in the education sector.

The project is developing policy-level guidelines for education ministries to work in concert with the health sector, as well as tools, curricula, and programs for local HIV and AIDS coordinators to better educate Caribbean youth and citizens about preventing HIV and AIDS.

“I’m inspired by the camaraderie of the countries in the region,” says Glenda Rolle. “We can share experiences and talk about the best practices in the region. So rather than reinvent programs and policies, we can build on what already works in the Caribbean.”