The Ministry of Education, to address the issue of the HIV-AIDS epidemic and its prevalence in ‘in-school’ youth has trained 41 persons from Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Ten to go into schools and conduct informative sessions with the aim of effecting behavioural? changes of zero new infection.CEO, Ministry of Education, Olato Sam presents one of the volunteers with her certificate.A GINA statement said that the project which is being done in collaboration with Peace Corps,Jerseys NFL Wholesale,? is christened, YES; Youth Educators Safe Guarding Our Workforce and was launched on Friday in the boardroom of the National Library where trained volunteers pledged their support to the project and were also awarded certificates for their participation.Present at the ceremony was Chief Education Officer, Ministry of Education Olato Sam, Programme Manager,Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping, National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS,) Dr. Shanti Singh,Wholesale NBA Jerseys China, HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Coordinator,Cheap NFL Jerseys China, Janelle Sweatnam and Peace Corps Response Volunteer, Lindsay Kurth.Sam said that such collaborative efforts are needed when moving the issues of broader significance to national development. He said that one single ministry cannot do it,Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping, what is needed is broad-based inter-sector support. To this end,Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping, he applauded the Peace Corps for supporting the initiative.The CEO also said that due recognition must be given to the young people who decided to become involved in the project. He also had advice for the Y.E.S volunteers. “It is very important that as you sit here to internalise the tremendous responsibility that we have placed on your shoulders…You are now ambassadors; you are going out into the trenches to try to address an issue that is of national significance. I think if you can appreciate that and treat it as such, you will recognise this is a call to serve and that you are in essence giving a very valuable service to this nation to begin to address something that is of epidemic proportion globally and certainly one of major concern from the national development,” he said.Peace Corps Response Volunteer, Lindsay Kurth explained that informative sessions were conducted with the volunteers and they were taught among other things the basics of HIV and AIDS, effective communication, what a youth educator is and how to be an effective youth educator.Kurth said that the YES Project has three ultimate goals, to build the capacity of the in-school youth, remove risky behaviour and replace them with healthy behaviour and to achieve zero new HIV infection from in-school youth.She explained that the volunteers will be provided with a package to aid their work as they go into the schools. This includes a primary and secondary school manual and guidebook that deals with HIV and AIDS among other things. The volunteers will take these tools and go into Grades 5, 6 and 9 of the schools each week and conduct an hour- long session with the students and build their capacity.Each volunteer committed one school year of service, and some volunteers would have committed to working with more than one school.Dr. Singh also addressed the volunteers and provided crucial statistics to render guidance as they go forward. Information such as the fact that 49.1 percent of all new cases of HIV that were reported to the Ministry of Health in 2012 came from youths aged 15 to 34 and the fact that young people are sexually active from as early as 14 years.