Our partner in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, have been using the Young Voices materials in their youth group sessions to start discussions about sexual health. We asked the youth group leader what they thought about Young Voices.
“The group loved the animations and kept asking to watch the rest of them. They thought cartoons were a good way to present information as they are used to seeing cartoons in the newspaper, and this is the section of the paper they always go for.”
We’ve recently created a new page on Avert.org - ‘Developing a vaccine against HIV infection’.
Avert
Explore the page to find out more about the need for a vaccine against HIV, challenges in vaccine development, progress in developing a vaccine and achieving an effective vaccine for HIV.
Our partner in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, run a youth group to bring young people together from the community and talk about sexual health.
The group meets twice a week at the Umunthu clinic where they have a dedicated youth shelter, which means they can they can talk in private about things are worrying them. Members share what they have learned with their friends and encourage them to come for an HIV test.
Are you looking for a quick and easy way to support our work? Then look no further. We’ve recently signed up with Donr – a new UK text giving service.
So all you have to do is text AVERT followed by the amount you want to give (e.g. ‘AVERT 5’ to donate £5) to 70085. Your donation will then be added to your phone bill or deducted from your pay as you go credit. You can opt to give any whole amount up to £20.
We’re currently developing a new digital information hub for community health workers working in HIV and sexual health in Southern Africa. The new Hub will provide a range of resources on HIV prevention, treatment and support.
To understand the current gaps and priorities, we will be engaging with community health workers and the organisations they work with throughout the process. Here's one of our focus groups in action.
Emily is a HIV education through football coordinator from our partner organisation in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation. We recently spoke to her about what the biggest challenges girls are facing when it comes to their sexual health and how the football project is helping to change that.
“Early pregnancy and large numbers of girls having STIs. Dropping out of school because of pregnancy is the main challenge for girls here. We think having programmes for sexual and reproductive health can help to educate those girls in terms of how they can prevent those challenges and overcome them.
At first girls were feeling shy to even ask you about the condom thing, it was difficult. But now when I go for the session they ask me ‘did you bring condoms for us, we need condoms!’”
Our Young Voices project was nominated as one of the three finalists for this year’s Bond Collaboration Award. The award recognises the importance of effective relationships and collaborations within and across disciplines to tackle difficult issues.
Collaboration and co-creation were core to Young Voices, bringing together 20 young people and 6 NGO partners from across Southern Africa to create the materials. So far, we’ve reached thousands of young people through social media and are now working with NGO partners to pilot the materials in their youth programmes.
Our partner organisation in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, has its own clinic in the heart of the local community. Here Eddah, one of the HIV testing counsellor, talks about the benefits of the clinic.
“People coming to Umunthu commend our infrastructure - the privacy itself, as it’s away from most of the people. And the way we provide our services, we can take more time with each person.”
In 2017, almost 600,000 young people got HIV worldwide. Our Young Voices project is helping to change that, giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to make informed choices about their sexual health.
“They feel that it’s safe discussing it [sexual health] with their fellow youth, rather than other people like parents or someone older than them. They are more open discussing issues about sexual reproductive health.”
Our partner organisation in Malawi, the Umunthu Foundation, run youth education programmes in schools and youth clubs. Tadala, one of the youth club coordinator, spoke to us about how these programmes are helping young people open up about their sexual health.
You may have noticed that we’ve added some new donate call to actions around the website. We want to reach as many people as possible with the information they need on HIV and sexual health, and with your support we can make that happen.
Every contribution helps, no matter how small. If you can, please donate now.
We’ve been running focus groups with community health workers in Southern Africa to find out what information they currently have access to, what the gaps are and what they would like to have.
In our focus group in Zimbabwe (organised by FACT), the community health cadres told us that when they search for information 'the answers aren't always readily there'. They spoke about wanting more information on HIV prevention, treatment adherence and preventing teen pregnancy - as well as resources to tackle common myths and misconceptions.
We’ve recently updated our About Avert section to make it even easier for you to find out who we are, what we do and how you can get involved – check it out!
We've just launched the first video in our brand new explainer series, telling you everything you need to know about HIV.
‘What is HIV?’ gets straight to the point and gives you the facts, explaining how HIV works and what happens if it’s not controlled by antiretroviral treatment.
The popularity of our news service continues to increase! We published over 25 news stories between Oct-Dec and had over 140,450 views of the news stories in total – that’s an increase of 49.9% from the previous three months (Jul-Sept)
Great to hear!
"Reading through testimonials of people living with HIV and AIDS has really helped me to understand a lot on what they go through.”
Our partner in Lesotho, PB, recently held a mother and daughters dialogue camp. They use this approach to bring young girls together with their mothers to break down barriers of communication and create a strong rapport so they can guide them on issues around HIV and sex.
Kate Harrison/Avert
It really helps to break down taboos and shame around talking about these subjects and helps young girls to be more confident that they someone to guide them when they have questions.
Did you know? We had an HIV take-over of the ELBI youth fundraising platform for 10 days over World AIDS Day. We developed two new fundraising videos and raised over £2,000!
At the end of last year we ran a promotional campaign for World AIDS Day, using user-generated content to encourage more young men and women to get tested for HIV in east and southern Africa.
We had some great results with over 1,775,000 people reached through Facebook and Instagram and over 87,500 views of at least 50% of the video! You can find out more about the campaign here.
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"This website continues to be a saving grace for those of us working in HIV and SRH in the African region."
