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Combine the sinister AIDS virus with life’s hardships in one of the world’s poorest countries, Burkina Faso, and you have a deadly drama. More than 200,000 AIDS orphans have become the living testimonies of a growing tragedy in Burkina Faso. But Joanna Ilboudo is doing her best to combat the voices of despair before it’s too late.

When Joanna and her husband, Florent, used their savings to launch Contact magazine in 1992, she never imagined it would become one of God’s prime weapons against AIDS in Burkina Faso. Few realized the magnitude of AIDS in Africa then.

But the 42-year-old former high school French teacher and mother of three isn’t easily daunted by new challenges. She works full-time directing a local Christian radio station and manages the magazine in her “spare time.”

Joanna’s communication skills and vision for voicing kingdom values have propelled her into a prime position for fighting the AIDS epidemic. While many in the church remained silent, two years ago Joanna began producing radio programs on Christian AIDS education.

Although the government of Burkina Faso recognizes the severity of AIDS problem, until recently they pushed condoms as the answer. “I believe that …most people here nowadays know about the danger of this disease,” President Blaise Compaore said. “What we still have to deal with is behavior.”

“Now, they are realizing that this is not the solution,” Joanna says. “They are trying to get the evangelical church in Burkina to move on this big issue, because it is only with Christian values that we can fight AIDS.”

While the government and international agencies such as World Relief are urging evangelical churches to find their voices, Joanna is developing conduits for the message. Last year Contact began featuring articles on AIDS. This year every issue will include an AIDS article.

Joanna knows the power of collaboration in the body of Christ. She is drawing on the resources of international development agencies doing AIDS work to strengthen the message. Agencies will rotate responsibility for contributing AIDS articles to each magazine issue. Joanna’s staff will add personal interview articles.

Despite Contact’s commitment to educate via the printed word, the country’s 19 percent literacy rate prevents many from accessing the magazine. In addition, an average annual income roughly equivalent to $1,000 makes it unaffordable for many. Amidst these realities, Joanna has risen to the need for a multi-pronged media approach.

Youth, ages 15 to 25, make up the country’s largest AIDS population, with a 10 percent HIV-positive rate-compared to seven percent of the general population. Joanna is using her creative prowess to develop new outreach tools. She hopes to saturate Christian youth with God’s foolproof abstinence plan via drama and videos.

Joanna instigated her own church’s youth drama team which now performs in neighboring churches, targeting youth. Their current production, “Youth, AIDS and Christian Life,” has garnered significant audiences.

Video presentations, followed by debates, have also proven to be a successful venue for reaching the media-hungry youth. Joanna’s staff gathers crowds in local churches and even on the dusty street outside Contact’s small office. Videos promote awareness and encourage loving Christian outreach.

“The videos are usually testimonies of someone who has lived with AIDS until death, ministered to by Christians,” Joanna says. Videos “are from Uganda and Rwanda where the church investment in the issue is remarkable.” She hopes the exemplary model of other African churches will motivate Christians in Burkina Faso.

But Joanna is not limiting her audience to the churches. Contact plans to produce AIDS awareness booklets for youth and then distribute free copies to schools. “It is vital that we go to schools with a Christian message because so far young people think the solution to AIDS is the condom,” she says.

So far outreach to a secular audience has proven successful. When the 12th International Conference on AIDS and STDS (sexually transmitted diseases) in Africa brought international attention to Burkina Faso last December, Joanna’s team at Contact boldly declared a Christian AIDS message to the world. Radio broadcasts, church dramas, videos and posters proclaimed abstinence and marital fidelity as the only sure methods for reversing the spread of AIDS.

Joanna says the people’s response was clear: “At last we have good messages related to AIDS prevention.”

Joanna Ilboudo can be reached at [email protected]

July 5, 2002