The Sojourners Among Us

The problem of myths

Myths have the potential to affect and even ruin the lives of people. One such myth has quickly found its way into Africa and other parts of the world. The myth has endangered, hurt, and even killed many young girls particularly in African countries, such as Zimbabwe and South Africa. Here is the myth: AIDS is curable if the infected person has sexual intercourse with a virgin. My question to you is, how do we make this myth stop spreading? Through some research, I discovered an organization called Girl Child Network (GCN). GCN works to protect the rights of young female children. One way that they have worked to protect the rights of young girls is to try and diminish the affects of the virgin cure myth. Teams of workers travelled around Zimbabwe acting out staged sex-myth plays/scenarios in front of large groups. Below, you can see one such worker with her “virgin-cure” myth t-shirt on. While GCN does not have any records or statistics stating the positive (or negative) affects of this campaign against such myths, it is still encouraging to see the organization trying to combat an obvious problem. Any ideas of other strategies to fight this deplorable and extremely false myth?