Congratulations to our partner in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, who have been certified by the government to deliver HIV treatment to local communities independently. Here are the team celebrating the first assignment of treatment arriving at their clinic!

The Umunthu Foundation

They currently provide treatment to nearly 2,000 people registered at a local government health facility, but the certification will mean they can offer treatment to anyone wanting to enrol. This means that people living nearby will be able to access their treatment closer to home, saving them a long walk to the health facility.

Peter is a youth coordinator from our partner organisation in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation. He's been trying out some of the Young Voices materials with an out of school youth group.

“The group loved the animations and keep asking to watch the rest of them. They thought cartoons were a good way to show information as they love looking at cartoons in the newspaper. The questions that came with the animations really brought out the issues well.”

Want to know what we got up to last year? Our latest Annual Report for 2017-18 is now out. Why not download a copy and take a read – we hope that our work inspires you!

Our Talking HIV series is back again. This time sharing the voices of young people from across Southern Africa. In the first episode, Lisa and Godknows share their experiences of sex education at school. Check it out!

One of Avert’s priority areas of work is challenging gender inequality that continues to fuel new HIV infections. In Zambia, our partner BISO recently met with community leaders to ask them what they thought was making young girls in their communities more vulnerable to HIV.

Corrie Wingate

This is what they said:

• Girls don’t have the power to decide when to engage into sexual practices
• Traditional counselling gives an upper hand to men as girls are taught to be submissive to men
• It is perceived traditionally that once a girl has reached puberty she is ready for sexual activity regardless of age
• Young girls being forced to marry older man and the practice of polygamy.

BISO is working with leaders and parents to challenge these damaging traditional and cultural norms.

Patricia is a peer health educator (PHE) as part of our partner BISO’s Adhere youth project in Zambia. Since becoming a PHE, Patricia has made lots of positive changes in her life and is enjoying helping her peers.

BISO

“I have now become a role model in the community and people respect me now. I also encourage other young people and friends to be visiting the health centre whenever they have problems. I can now make informed decisions and am proud to be a Peer Health Educator because I can now influence positive change in young people.”

So far our Young Voices stories have reached over 495,000 young people from Southern Africa on Facebook and Instagram!

The stories are designed to promote thinking and discussion around key sexual health topics including having sex without a condom, unhealthy relationships, options for contraception, dating older people, talking about HIV, and saying ‘no’ to sex. Check them out!

Our HIV news coverage is going from strength to strength. In August alone our news stories were read nearly 33,000 times – a 34% increase on the previous month!

Our new accelerated mobile pages have really boosted our news readership on mobile, which was up by a whopping 59%. If you’re not already getting our news updates, sign up for them here.

For this year’s International Youth Day, our partner organisation in Lesotho, PB, took to the streets with their youth groups to celebrate the role of young people in the HIV response and the importance of safe spaces.

Phelisanang Bophelong (PB)

Young people are particularly vulnerable to HIV in Lesotho, where 25% of the population are living with HIV. PB works with schools and health facilities to create safe spaces for young people to meet and talk openly about sexual health and HIV.

To get to our site young people google: 'what is HIV?' and 'how is HIV transmitted?'. We know that they want to know the facts about HIV, and they want to get them through the privacy of their phones and tablets. At Avert we are helping young people get the information they want and need. It's important that we don't underestimate what they still need to know about HIV prevention!

Corrie Wingate

Our partners, the Umunthu Foundation, in Malawi understand that young people don’t always want to come to a health facility to get tested for HIV, that’s why Umunthu also have a library full of resources on other subjects.

Young people fear that if they meet someone they know in a clinic, they’ll ask ‘why are you here?’.

Isaac from our partner organisation in Zambia (BISO) presented a poster at the AIDS 2018 conference on their Avert-funded youth work.

His poster showcased using a peer-led community approach to reach more young people and improve SRH service uptake in a rural area of Zambia.

Last year, our partners in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation tested record numbers of people for HIV. They tested 45,028 adults and children, compared to 36,898 the year before.

 This included 19,216 young people (aged 15-24) and 9,248 pregnant women. For the first time ever nearly half (44%) of people testing were men, thanks to their dedicated men’s testing sessions, and around 29% of people had never had a test before. 

Our ‘theory of change’ underpins our 2017-21 strategy. It explains the change we want to bring about, how we believe we can most effectively contribute to and bring about that change, and the assumptions this thinking is based on.

Read more about our strategy and theory of change, or support us to build momentum and reach those most at risk of HIV infection with the information they need to protect themselves and others.

Nancy and Peter who participated in our Young Voices workshop were with us at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. If you missed them talking to Charlize Theron about what meaningful youth participation looks like, click to catch it again:

Mohasoa, from our partner organisation in Lesotho (PB), presented a poster on PB’s Avert-funded work with LGBT young people at the AIDS 2018 conference.

He outlined the project’s approach to overcoming the barriers to HIV service access that LGBT communities face. PB run safe spaces to improve self-efficacy among LGBT and encourage HIV service take-up. In tandem they build relationships with influential people to improve social relations at community level, which helps LGBT people to access HIV services without discrimination.

We are back from AIDS2018, where we have had an exciting week showcasing our new Young Voices project and speaking to people working across the HIV response about our work.

Sharing with them ideas on how to engage young people to co-create sexual health materials that speak to them.

We have launched our brand new Young Voices project. Get the first five stories on our Young Voices hub now.

Each story was co-created with young people from across Southern Africa and comes with downloadable resources including key facts, discussion points and comic strips, to help you run group sessions around them.

We’ve just launched a way for people to donate to Avert directly through Facebook. We’d love it if you’d let all your friends know about this!

Our partners from Zambia and Lesotho will be presenting their Avert-funded youth work at the AIDS 2018 conference.

Corrie Wingate

Isaac from BISO and Mohasoa from PB will be travelling to Amsterdam to give poster presentations about their work reaching young people with SRH information in rural Zambia and empowering LGBT youth in Lesotho respectively. More about this soon!