Cross-border HIV/AIDS interventions aim to maintain a seamless preventive environment for those who cross the border and linger in checkpost towns. Exposing travelers to the same messages as they move from one country to another shows them
that HIV/AIDS is not a "foreign" disease and that a sincere effort is made in both countries to prevent it.
The staff of the two HIV/AIDS prevention projects sponsored by AIDSCAP on either side of the India-Nepal border believed it was important to maintain consistency not only in the prevention messages being disseminated across the border but also in the image and tone of those messages. Thus, the Bhoruka AIDS Prevention (BAP) Project adopted the project logo developed by AIDSCAP/Nepal to use in posters, leaflets, stickers and counter displays.
A few changes were necessary to make the Nepal program's logo culturally acceptable to Indian sensibilities. The logo shows a condom named Dhaaley Dai fighting the HIV virus with a shield. (The program markets condoms under the brand name "Dhaal," or shield.) Focus group discussions held with Indian truck drivers to pretest the image revealed that they could not identify with the shield, which is a symbol of Nepal's legendary Gurkha soldiers. The condom figure's muscular arms and legs also were not appealing to the Indian men.
After revisions based on the pretesting, the logo designed for the BAP Project was similar to the Nepali animated condom, but without the shield and the muscular limbs. The eyes and nose on the condom also were modified to look more Indian. The messages, translated into Hindi, remained the same.
The pretesting and adaptation of the AIDSCAP/Nepal program logo for use in the BAP Project in India is one of many examples of the collaboration between the two projects. This collaboration enables project staff to communicate consistent yet culturally appropriate HIV/AIDS prevention messages among mobile populations along the border.
-- Mrudula Amin
