Description of Intervention: Be Proud! Be Responsible!

The intervention consisted of one 5-hour session held on a Saturday morning in a local school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The session was led by African-American men and women with backgrounds in human sexuality education, nursing, social work, and small group facilitation. The leaders received 6 hours of training for this intervention. The intervention included information about risks associated with injection drug use and specific sexual activities. The intervention used videos, games, exercises, and other culturally and developmentally appropriate materials to reinforce learning and to encourage active participation.

For example, one video was narrated by an African-American woman and had a multi-ethnic cast.

In another activity, "AIDS Basketball," participants formed into teams to earn points for correctly answering factual questions on AIDS. In the exercise, "Uncle Bill's Advice Column," pairs of adolescents wrote a response to a letter to Uncle Bill about AIDS or risky behavior and then read it to the rest of the group for discussion.

A condom exercise focused on the correct use of condoms. The participants also engaged in role-playing situations depicting potential problems in trying to implement safer sex practices, including abstinence.