Less than a year after teaming up with e3 Partners, developer of the popular EvangeCube® ministry tool, SIM announces the creation of the new HIV/AIDS Cube, which is designed to educate people about the basics of HIV and AIDS.

The size of a Rubik’s Cube®, the HIV/AIDS Cube is a clear, simple tool that addresses both the contraction and spread of HIV, as well as how to care for people living with HIV and AIDS.

A Providential Partnership

The partnership between SIM and e3 began in December 2006, when SIM USA’s Bob Blees and John Barnshaw attended Saddleback Church’s “Global Summit on AIDS and the Church” in Lake Forest, California. Blees and Barnshaw providentially sat at the same table with Dan Hitzhusen, Vice President of e3 Partners, who shared with them e3’s desire to develop an HIV/AIDS Cube. However, the e3 organization was looking for help, so Blees and Barnshaw offered to get involved.

In only 10 ½ months, the HIV/AIDS Cube went from concept to reality. An early prototype of the cube was field-tested by e3 in Sudan and Rwanda, and as a result of that training, nearly 10,000 people have now learned the key points of protecting themselves and their loved ones from contracting HIV.

An Enthusiastic Response

Dr. Zege Tsige, former Harvard Dean, spent an additional three weeks training health care professionals in Ethiopia, and the comments e3 received were all similar to this one: “We have notebooks of complicated AIDS training. This tool boils most of what we have learned down into a very simple, transferable method that we can immediately share.”

	The HIV/AIDS Cube prototype being used in Sudan

More training sessions have since been conducted in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and Ethiopia. Bob Blees was involved in the two-day “training the trainers” seminars in Burundi and Ethiopia, which involved one day of training and hands-on practice and one day of evaluation and feedback. He says, “I was surprised to see that, the closer you get to the person on the ground who is using the cube to train others, the enthusiasm is actually greater.”

With that enthusiasm—and a goal of putting a cube into the hands of everyone who is doing educating—SIM and e3 have already seen greater results than were anticipated. “The demand [for cubes] is well beyond what we ever expected,” says Blees.

Already 20,000 cubes have been shipped—10,000 of which are on their way to Africa—and another 20,000 have been manufactured and will be shipping soon.

	Pastor Israel N. Ndlouy and Nonto Nzimande, HIV/AIDS Reduction Project, South Africa

Future Developments

Beyond interest in the cubes themselves, the African training sessions produced good data to validate the use of the cube as a teaching method and helpful feedback that has led to a redesign of the cube graphics to make it more “universal” (rather than specifically “African”). Other related items are also being developed: an oversized demonstration cube; a pictorial PowerPoint; an evaluation sheet; and a manual on HIV and AIDS.

SIM and e3 Partners will be meeting up again at Saddleback Church in November, this time to present the new HIV/AIDS Cube together to all the participants at this year’s “Global Summit on AIDS and the Church.”

The HIV/AIDS Cube is available from SIM USA or from e3 Resources.