USAID HIV/AIDS Flagship Project: CPI Organizes Social Media for HIV Awareness Workshop

Following the ‘Social Media for HIV Awareness’ panel discussion, the USAID HIV/AIDS Flagship (UHF) Project held a social media training workshop to equip UHF partners and civil society organizations with the tools necessary to implement HIV-awareness campaigns. The workshop, attended by 38 participants from 15 organizations, was organized by Community Partners International (CPI) and led by Tham Tran, Senior Marketing and Communication Manager at PATH-USAID/Healthy Markets in Vietnam, and Thant Sin, Tech 4 Peace Lead at Phandeeyar.

Returning to the key points she raised in the panel discussion, Tham Tran emphasized the importance of understanding the intended audience, creating relevant and engaging content, and utilizing channels used frequently and extensively by the audience. She noted the importance of understanding clients’ insights and their preferred communications platforms through an initial survey. This was followed by a discussion on the importance of integrating health-related information with topics of interest, such as fashion. She then encouraged participants to work and collaborate with positive social influencers within communities to create wide-reaching and impactful HIV-awareness campaigns.

In the second half of the workshop, Thant Sin, encouraged participants to consider the potential of utilizing Facebook to promote their project activities and implement HIV-awareness campaigns. This was followed by an overview of best practices on social media, as well as a discussion on gender and conflict sensitivity. Participants then studied several Facebook tools used to increase, measure and understand audience engagement, and created practice “campaigns” using Canva—a free graphic design tool used to create visually engaging documents and posts.