Teens report from HIV frontline

Four years ago, 16-year-old Evelyn Mokele was pregnant and had tested positive for HIV.

"When I found out, I gave up on everything," she said.

But instead of allowing her status to serve as a death sentence, Evelyn used the virus to gain a voice.

With encouragement from members of the Olive Leaf foundation, a community youth development organisation, she applied for and was accepted to the GlobalGirl Media Academy.

The academy trains disadvantaged girls from around the world to become citizen journalists, using digital media to tell their own stories and those of their peers and community members.

This year, 10 HIV-positive girls from Soweto were selected for the programme.

"I'll say these nine global girls made me strong. I was in denial. Now we are all one family accepting the way we are," Evelyn said.

In one of her videos, she asked school classmates what they thought about safe sex and sexually transmitted diseases. A pupil took the microphone and said with a smirk: "When I'm in the mood for sex, I'm not afraid of anything."

Before the video ends, Evelyn reveals to her classmates that she is HIV-positive.

The mood in the room changes dramatically. The same classmate responds: "What you have just told us has scared us."

Another trainee journalist, Mandisa Madikane, who was raped and infected with HIV at the age of six, had stopped talking, run away and shut the world out.

With encouragement from HIV/Aids activist Lucky Mazibuko, Mandisa came back to life. "I just felt it has been too long. I felt eager to speak about it," she said.

The girls' video clips were compiled into a documentary, Our World My Voice: A Global Girl Media South Africa Report, which was screened at Johannesburg high schools and the US Consulate.

<p =""><a href="http://vimeo.com/35434273">Teen Debate: Revealing HIV status</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/globalgirlmedia">GlobalGirl Media</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>