Youth poarticipants listening during the Youth Outreach activity- Makadara Constituiency.

The TASC members have organized 2 community outreach to their fellows peers in their communities.These are going to be based in Makadara contituency and kibera constituency where the youth volunteers are coming from and where the overral project is to cover.

Ther first training that took place was in Makadara constituency on the 12th of July 2008 at Jericho Social hall with an overall objective to sensitize our peers on stigma related to HIV/AIDS and give ways and means of combating stigma.

OVERVIEW
The function was started officially by the Makadara focal person Moses Oluchiri welcoming the youths to the workshop and elaborating to them the aim of the workshop. The participants were then required to give their expectations and after the introductions Christabell Opudo of Stay Alive Youth Group was introduced to share the background of the project.

PRESENTATIONS
The presentations was done by the 15 volunteers through an interactive session focused on on introduction to HIVAIDS and modes of transmission, stigma: its definition and forms of stigma.

Our invited guest's the Makadara Constituency Development Fund Youth representative was present and he talked about the youth development fund and how the young people can benefit and manage the fund. He is ready to work with teh team on any HIV/AIDS programmes since it was not so much covered in the youth community activities.
Also present was the welfare officer talked to the paticipanst sighting on how she was proud of the young people who participated in this program. She encouraged them to continue with the same spirit and that she was willing to support the Makadara youths by having the hall for free in their future activities. She was happy with the Kibera facilitators and she requested them to come back again.

CONCLUSION
The session was interactive and successful; it was well received by the participants and the community at large. Plans to have more of such dialogues are underway.

Save the date for the next community outreach in Kibera constituency.

Regards,
Christabell

Progress Report.

• Establishment of clubs.
One more club has been established in Mbayani called Tingathe club (meaning we can do it). It has a membership of 12 girls aged between 15-24 years.

• Skill building trainings
Thirty girls from three clubs have been trained in group dynamics, leadership and volunteerism. This was to spur and stimulate their interest in participation and involvement in the fight against HIV/Aids. Leadership training was geared at enhancing leadership skills amongst members and to build a strong team that will make a difference. This activity took place in two days per group (from 4th to 5th July 2008 for Manja, from 8th to 9th July 2008 for Misesa young women and 10 to 11th July 2008 for Che somba club).

In all these groups, members agreed to get involved in awareness activities and suggested the following activities to be performed during this campaign; sports festivals, drama pieces, dancing and variety shows, big walk, peer to peer information sharing and holding women’s workshops. In all the sites action plan has been drawn. Participating girls showed much enthusiasm and wanted to learn more on HIV/Aids and to participate in HIV/Aids awareness activities.

Plan for the next two weeks.
• Training on group dynamic, leadership and volunteerism for the newly established club.
• Training on sexual and reproductive rights in all the four clubs

Dear GYCA members,

I am pleased to share with all of you these short update of how things are going on ground for the VCT Campaign Project ;Huye, Rwanda.

Indeed, for the program of VCT Campaign Project to be more efficient and of quality we started with a preparatory stage. For this first important stage, We have already received a go ahead from MEDSAR, RVCP, Faculty of Medicine and MUKURA Sector. Also, we have recruited enough Project Volunteers. In regards to the recruitment, we received so many applications and the selection was overwhelming. We ended up by selecting a team of 20 volunteers as 13 boys and 7 girls. For the purpose of gender balance, we approved all applications received from girls and we will continue to involve more girls in order to reach the same number as for the boys.

Besides that I want to invite all of to our next blog which will be about an upcoming one day training of project volunteers and advertisement of a home-based campaign as two final important event within the preparatory stage.
We will be pleased to inform you how It will be like. It is well prepared and we hope that it will be successful.
Rendez-vous at our next blog on the 30th July 2008.

Hello friends,

It is my pleasure to update you about our project activities. We have developed KAP (Knowledge, attitude, and perception) survey form, to get knowledge about the attitudes, knowledge and perception of young women towards HIV/AIDS.

The survey will be conducted in this month for need assessment of young women, and on the basis of survey a training will be conducted for young women of Peshawar City.

Gulalai
Pakistan

Hello friends,
It is my pleasure to update you about our project activities. We have developed KAP (Knowledge, attitude, and perception) survey form, to get knowledge about the attitudes, knowledge and perception of young women towards HIV/AIDS.

We will conduct survey in this month to do need assesment of young women, on the basis of which training will be organized for young women.

Gulalai
Pakistan

My name is Faith Phiri and I am 30 years old. I am a founder and Program Director for Girls Empowerment Network in Malawi. I am so passionate for the young people more especially girls and young women who are most of the times victim of abuse, sexual exploitation and lack adequate education on SEXUALITY and HIV/Aids.

Most girls targeted in this campaign are denied of the opportunity to higher education and are forced to premature marriages and get married to elderly men who had had multiple sexual partners. Unfortunately their marriages do not last long and are dumped and left with big responsibilities of caring for their siblings. Sex becomes a means of survival for these girls and this again increases probable to HIV exposure. This campaign will also target in school girls so that they are adequately skilled and be able to make wise choices and decisions.

This campaign intends to reach 50 girls as direct beneficiaries and 500 girls indirectly.

Project Progress (15-30 June 2008)
1. Establishment of three girls clubs.
Three clubs has been established so far and these are Manja volunteer girls club, Misesa young women for change and Che Nsomba club. Members of these clubs will be involved in voluntarism and will be recruited as peer educators. The trained Peer Educators will be expected to reach out to more girls and young women on HIV/Aids issues, sexuality, gender and women’s right.

2. Planning meetings.
Planning sessions have been taking place with girls involved in this project and community members (parents and local leadership). Basically this activity was aimed at identifying information gaps and better understands sexual and reproductive health needs of girls.

Introduction:
My name is Christabell Opudo, I come from Nairobi Kenya. I have been engaged in youth activities since 2006 focusing on advocacy on positive living and reaching out to young people by sharing information on HIV/AIDS. I realized that so many young people are not aware of their HIV status, since they have not taken the initiative to get tested and more so the young people who are living with that I met were trying very hard to empower themselves so at to live positive. Their efforts seemed tireless since they had not reached out to their fellow youth who they were involved into day to day activities. This did not only jeopardize their efforts to live positively with HIV but promoted stigma of all types among the young people.
Activities carried out:
Identification of volunteers.
These exercise was to help in identifying volunteers that would work together to achieve the projects objectives.
This was done through referral by group leaders in the identified constituencies Makadara and Kibera where the TASC project will cover.
The call was made to reach out to individuals who are interested to be volunteers to join the Together against stigma project with the qualities listed below:

1. Age 18-35 years (definition of youth according to Kenyan constitution)
2. Peer educator with knowledge on HIV/AIDS
3. A member of a youth group based in Nairobi
4. Ready to offer 2-4 hours per week when called upon on specific days
5. Active email address and phone number
6. With knowledge of either Makadara or Kibera constituency environs
7. Effective communication/facilitation skills will be an added advantage
The total number of volunteers who responded to this programme was 25 and due to the fact that the project was to cater for 15 volunteers, adjustments had to be done to be able to accommodate all the volunteers and this was possible as all the volunteers were taken through the grant made and also the activities involved.

Capacity building for volunteers
To be able to have effective volunteers who respond to the needs of the projects it is wise to build their capacity through trainings that focused on the project objectives to be ale to improve their way of handling the programme activities.
The 3 days capacity building training focused on training 25 participants on the topics below:

Day 1
1. Basic facts on HIV/AIDS Definition, modes of transmission,
2. Prevention and treatment, immune system, stages of HIV illness, signs and symptoms
3. Stigma definition and forms of stigma
4. Manifestation of Stigma,
5. Interventions to combating stigma

Day 2.
1. Volunteer trends & definitions.
2. Volunteer wheel
3. Volunteer Recruitment Selection and induction
4. Volunteer support, training and retention
5. Volunteer Evaluations and policies

Day 3.
1. Project management definition, objectives role of coordinator.
2. Managing resources,
3. Evaluation and report writing.
4. Facilitation skills
5. Overview Stay Alive youth group, TASC project and policies
6. TASC plan of action
7. Group work,
8. Evaluations

Allocation of duties and assignments
The participants divided duties and activities amongst themselves. The work force was dived into 2.
1. Members from Kibera community
To organize a youth dialogue focusing on HIV/AIDS and stigma related to it, at the Kibera community to be held on the 26th July 200. The facilitators will be the members from Makadara community.

2. Members from Makadara community.
To organize youth dialogue focusing on HIV/AIDS and stigma related to it, at the Makadara community level to be held on the 12th July 2008. The facilitators will be the participants from Kibera constituency.

Regards,
Christabel