We’ve been preparing for the new GDPR regulations and getting in with our newsletter subscribers. But if you missed our emails and still want to hear from us, just sign up for our newsletters here.

 

We have updated our consent page. It now covers a far broader concept of consent as an ongoing process.

Have a read and let us know what you think!

In follow up to our post last month about the Sisonke project in South Africa, we wanted to share some of the learning from the end of project evaluation. Between 2005 and 2018 the project supported over 15,000 vulnerable elderly people and young children across 20 rural communities during the most challenging phase of the HIV epidemic. 

Avert helped establish the Sisonke Project with the Diocese of Grahamstown’s Department of Social Responsibility (the DSR) in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, in 2005. Read more in our learning brief here.

Our HIV timeline holds a wealth of information and education on the global response spanning four decades.

Click on the multimedia tab for a whistlestop tour of how far we’ve come from the silent epidemic in the 1980s to where we are now, gathering momentum to reach the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets for people knowing their status, being on treatment and being virally suppressed.

At the end of May, our partner organisation in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, held a launch event for their HIV education through football programme. The event brought together government officials with communities involved in the project to watch football and promote it as a great approach to increase the knowledge of young people about HIV and sexual health. Over 5,000 attended the event and 100 people tested for HIV at the side of the pitch .

Last month our pages on Avert.org were read nearly 1.3 million times!

 

 

Our most viewed page? ‘What are HIV and AIDS’ – perhaps the most important page on the site! We’re doing all we can to reach more and more people with clear and accessible information on HIV and sexual health.

Avert launched a new Instagram account at the end of last year. We are using this new visual platform to engage with younger audiences around the world. Follow us at @avertaids

 

At Avert we have annual learning exchange programmes for our partner organisations. This year David, the Director of Umunthu Foundation (Malawi), visited BISO in Zambia. 

Here, he learnt about how they mobilise and train community volunteers to enable more people to access HIV services. David said “We learnt that there is strong community participation in health programming and implementation as planning starts from the community. The community involvement gives the people a sense of ownership”.

Avert’s news pages are now using AMP technology so they will load even faster – particularly for people accessing our site on mobile.

 

We asked a group of peer educators working with our partner in Zambia, BISO, what some of the barriers are for young people to access sexual health services in their community. Hear what they had to say in this short video.....

 We have released a brand new collection of quizzes on Avert.org, covering transmission, testing and treatment.

Now people can access the information they need in a fun, interactive and entertaining way. Are there any subjects that you’d find particularly useful or interesting?

We visited our partner organisation in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, in February to support them with their annual planning.​​​​​​​

This year, Umunthu plan to reach even more people with HIV testing through dedicated men's clinics open at the weekend, and through outreach testing to reach vulnerable groups outside of clinics, like reaching young people on the football pitch.

We’re excited to have signed a new contract to support the World Health Organization’s HIV and Hepatitis department on their news and newsletter communications.

Over the next six months we’ll be working with their technical teams to research and write news on their latest HIV and hepatitis developments for publication on the WHO and Avert websites. We hope to be able to develop this into broader collaboration on HIV and sexual health communications going forward.

If you haven’t seen it already, we’ve created a new gay health hub on Avert.org so that gay men can get all the information they need in one easy to access space.

We are going to be launching more specially tailored landing pages in the future for other groups of people as well. Let us know what you think!

Relebohile's story:

"I was able to make a decision that has changed my life. I tested for HIV and got positive results. Because I had sufficient information on HIV/AIDS."

"I accepted my status, enrolled into treatment and I am now living openly with HIV. I take my medication accordingly with pride and I am all happy. Had I not joined the group and gained knowledge, none of this could have happened. That was really the best thing that changed my life." - Prison youth group member at PB, Avert's partner in Lesotho.

We’re really excited that our Avert.org educational content reached 848,000 new people in March alone!

Over 100,000 of those were from 6 countries in South and West Africa particularly affected by HIV, where knowledge about HIV is particularly important, and where increasing access to digital information is transforming society and ways people can access information. In total 101,800 visitors to Avert.org came from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe in March - with many others coming from across Africa and the world.

March 2018 marked our last month working with our fantastic partner in South Africa, the DSR.

Since 2005, the Sisonke project has been empowering grandmothers in communities heavily affected by the HIV epidemic with knowledge and skills to take care of themselves and their grandchildren, who have often lost their parents. In light of the project’s immense progress, the increased availability of domestic resourcing for HIV, and wider social development in South Africa, Avert began a two-year phase out of its grant to Sisonke in 2016, and we have been working with the DSR to plan the next phase of the project. We wish them all the very best for the future!

We will soon be sharing more about the impact and lessons learned from Sisonke. Watch this space.

Welcome to our new Avert blogfeed! This blogfeed will be bringing you brief updates about what we’ve been doing at Avert (and with our partners) across all our different areas of work.

We hope you like it – but do let us know if there are any particular areas of our work you’d like to know more about.