[ Victoria's Story]

Victoria Nayou is a 24-year-old mother of two who lives in one of the most remote regions of Liberia. Most of the 100,000 residents of heavily forested Grand Gedeh County, situated near the Cote d'Ivoire border, live in mud homes roofed with palm fronds or corrugated zinc and survive on food rations from the UN's World Food Program.

Young people there know dangerously little about how to protect themselves from HIV-AIDS. In the absence of consistent and widespread information, one message seems to overwhelm all the rest: AIDS kills. It's a message that promotes stigma, fear and discrimination — and that holds back efforts to prevent the disease from spreading.

In Liberia, Mercy Corps is using the drawing power of the world's most popular sport to reach young people with important messages about HIV-AIDS. "YES to Soccer," a joint effort by Mercy Corps, Nike and the U.S. nonprofit Grassroot Soccer, combines young people's passion for the sport with participatory games, role-plays and discussions about HIV-AIDS.

"Before participating in YES to Soccer, I thought I could get HIV from eating food or shaking hands with an HIV-positive person," explains Victoria. "Now I know that this is not true, and that you can only get HIV from having unprotected sex with someone who is HIV-positive or sharing blood." Victoria also now knows that she has many options to protect herself from HIV: she can abstain, be faithful to an uninfected partner, or use a condom.