MY TY: Mark Notherand his fellow Transition Year students at Gort Community School in Co Galway staged an elaborate outdoor presentation to highlight the UN Millennium Development Goals

LAST WEEK the Transition Year students in Gort Community School held a school-based event to raise awareness about HIV and Aids in children and to inform people of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Our event consisted of a 20-minute outdoor dramatisation, a PowerPoint presentation and a keynote speech given by Father Michael Kelly, an internationally renowned expert on Aids.

We came up with the idea after we heard about a conference on the Millennium Development Goals held in early September and the global forum on Aids in which one of our students was involved.

The MDGs are eight international development goals that 189 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organisations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015.

We in TY decided to research and learn more about the MDGs. After doing this we decided to base our event on three of these goals: Goal No. 4 - reduce child mortality; Goal No 5 - improve maternal health; and Goal No 6 - combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases.

Our outdoor dramatisation began at 11.20 with 200 of our senior students coming out to the sound of music and forming the numbers two, one and five. We then had a group of first-year students carry out a large tarpaulin with the world painted on it which was used in representing the number zero. Put together, these formed the number 2015, which is the year set down for the MDGs to be completed. We then displayed two banners reading "Where will you be?", which is the slogan of the MDGs, and "Stop Aids in Children".

In the second part of this we turned over the tarpaulin to reveal a picture of a foetus in a womb. A fourth-year student volunteered to symbolize the Hiv attacking the foetus. To represent it attacking we used three footballs as the Hiv virus. Looking down the football pitch, you could see five students, each with a letter from the acronym PMTCT (Prevention of mother-to-child transmission). Spectators witnessed the PMTCT getting the balls kicked at them and then throwing them away to protect the foetus, to represent the prevention of transmission of the disease. We also had the eight logos made out of wood by TY students. These were placed on either side of our display.

After this we showed our guests our PowerPoint presentation on the MDGs.

We then had Fr Michael give his keynote speech to all 200 students involved along with students from our Ethiopian Committee.

We as students are appealing to the media, local and national politicians, NGOs and you the readers to come out and help publicise this and help combat this global epidemic. Can we make a difference in the fight against HIV and Aids? In the words of President elect Barack Obama, "Yes, we can!"