Preview SAfAIDS Materials in 2017

Established in 1994, SAfAIDS is a regional non-profit organisation based in Harare, (Zimbabwe), with country offices in Pretoria (South Africa), Lusaka (Zambia) and Manzini (Swaziland). For the last 20 years, SAfAIDS has implemented programmes in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. SAfAIDS is recognised for its capacity to bring national lessons and experiences to regional advocacy and knowledge - sharing platforms.

Mission

To be a centre of excellence that promotes effective and ethical development responses to SRH, HIV and TB integrated with livelihood strategies; through advocacy, communication and social mobilisation (ACSM).

Vision

To ensure that ALL people in Africa realise their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and are free from the burden of HIV, GBV and TB, and their inter-linkages with other health and developmental issues.

Goal

To complement National Governments and Regional Bodies in their efforts to reduce HIV increase uptake of SRH HIV and TB information and services and build community resilience within southern Africa by 2020.

SAfAIDS model for social change

SAfAIDS’ work is centred on the belief that people have an inherent capacity to solve their own problems. However, they can only act when they have the relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes that will catalyse them into action to change their situation. Our work is based on a socio-ecological model of behaviour change that seeks to influence change at the individual, family, peer, community and policy level.

Materials produced in 2017

We produced, and reproduced, a lot of materials for young people this year. Adolescents and Young Adults are an important part of our work.

We also support other key populations in our work.

The issue we tackle in overcoming HIV are many. Our materials and information is also thematic when needed, especially on training and capacity building. This year working with men and boys has been amplified.

At the heart of our work is advocacy, and we take a rights based approach to all we do.

And we do it all in an edu-taining way, so campaigns at national and local level happen all year round in all our programme sites across the region.

All these materials and more can be found via our new website www.safaids.net or get in touch with us directly on reg@safaids.net

SAfAIDS Partnership Approach through Documentation

This post highlights how we use materials to support our partners to grow and do more, and use our skills in communication for development to provide services to like minded organisations to create greater impact. 

SAfAIDS Publications and Documentation Team supported several of our partners to communicate better who they are and what they do in the last year. That is just good business no matter who you are!

With support from Irish Aid we helped five Zimbabwean civil society organisations improve their visibility. Under more general support, we are currently supporting two emerging CBOs; Deaf Women Included and Transgender and Intersex Rising Zimbabwe with the same.

The Team was also invited by UNFPA Botswana and the Botswana Government to assess and then document two best practice models at state run health facilities under a regional initiative to support improve integration of HIV and SRHR services.


These documents detail the models used, the spirit that led to success and the lesson learned for sharing across the region for others aiming to do the same.


An exciting success has been our work with important regional stakeholders. This year SADC Parliamentary Forum contracted the Team to research and produce an SRHR & HIV Information and Visibility Pack for MPs across southern Africa. A comprehensive package with 11 information booklets with knowledge sessions, info graphics, implementation advice and lesson learning case studies was published online, and should be in print very soon.

Those agencies with Pvt. Ltd at the end of their names are also very important in the journey to Better Health for ALL! Quantum Mines in Zambia got back to use to boost their IEC once more and produce new posters and take-home leaflets (our SAfAIDS Zambia Office also did educational outreach to operational sites, and following edutainment sessions these take-homes were available to all who attended and the posters a info-footprint in the community).

A longer term collaboration with UNFPA ESARO office finally came to fruition this year with a really exciting resource package focusing on life skills for young people living with HIV. It is a beautiful book set, facilitator led and ideal for class or club settings. Book sets are being sent to 22 countries and are available in soft copy from our website. Our dream with this one is to find a supporter to expand the print run (and translate) so that more young people and their teachers/mentors can receive them.

Two very recent commissions are also worth sharing.

ILO Zimbabwe this year supported the Government of Zimbabwe to launch an HIV prevention plan for the Informal Sector Economy.

Together with NAC they engaged SAfAIDS to train Informal Sector Economy movers and shakers in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, which was followed up  with IEC that those trained could take with them across the country to promote HIV Testing and GBV prevention.

J F Kapnek Trust, a partner under the Zimbabwe NAP for OVC Programme and funded through UNICEF, partnered with SAfAIDS to produce a sign language dictionary that was child friendly and included important terminology around child protection. Did you know Sign Language is not universal? In Zimbabwe the Sign Language Dictionary that SAfAIDS helped to produce in 2012 was the first of its kind. 

The new updated dictionary came hand-in-hand with an adaptation of SAfAIDS Y4R Rights in Pocket booklet tailored for young people living with disability and their circle of care.

It is exciting to work on these materials to support the rights of those living with disability, and make access to critical health rights information more accessible. If you want to get involved, let us know.

All these materials and more can be found via our new website www.safaids.net 

A Review of SAfAIDS 2016 Materials

In 2016 SAfAIDS revamped its website and updated its strategic plan.

This kept us all busy, but we did continue to produce some amazing publications.

Here is a summary of the main new materials that were finalised and launched by SAfAIDS under our national and regional programmes. All materials, together with more information on the programmes that SAfAIDS runs are available on our new look website: www.safaids.net

The YPISA Dialogue Guide is part of the broad set of toolkits used by our regional SRHR Youth Movement, spearheaded by the amazing SRHR training, dialogue platforms and mentorship of the SAfAIDS Young People Leadership Academy.

It is a step by step guide for new SRHR ambassadors on how to introduce sensitive but important topics around sexual and reproductive health, as well as talk to the stakeholders and gatekeepers, as young people, in a culturally sensitive way that helps them accentuate their voice and the important needs of adolescents and young people. Health For All!



The Sex Workers Advocacy Guide (SWAG for short) first arrived in a glossy glitter and leopard skin reversible bag and launched in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. The aim was to support a cadre of trained sex workers to reach out, support and encourage other sex workers to improve their health seeking behaviour and collectively tackle the barriers they face to staying safe and healthy. The programmes key message is 'Give Us a Voice and We Will Do it Ourselves'.

It has since been reprinted for all the Key Population programmes that SAfAIDS operates in-country and regionally. The booklet is a pocket-friendly information guide for sex workers that have undergone SAfAIDS SRHR training and have signed-up to protect themselves, and each other, as well as advocating to overcome the barriers they face in achieving their sexual and reproductive health rights. The package comes with five take-home flyers to the wider sex worker community.


SAfAIDS Youth Changing The Rivers Flow Toolkit was also launched in 2016, rolling out Gender Transformative Approaches as a pilot across four districts, focusing on young people (catching them young) and their circle of care (enabling environment). It has been in such demand by the community, that includes young people, teachers, parents and community leaders, that it has been reprinted under other SAfAIDS GBV and HIV Prevention programmes in Zimbabwe.

SAfAIDS also produced an exciting in-school package through the Health 4 Life 360 programme titled 'Thandie DREAMS' as part of the Zimbabwe DREAMS initiative. Thandie Talks About HIV was a groundbreaking comic-book first published by SAfAIDS in Zimbabwe in 2009. In this new resource, Thandie's has grown from a pre-teen to a full-fledged teenager, with all the issues teenagers face today. Packaged as a 'Teachers Classroom Resource' guide for Guidance and Counselling lessons with references, information and teaching plans for 18 HIV and GBV risk reduction classroom sessions (adaptable for clubs and out of school initiatives).

SAfAIDS also expanded its Regional Rock 90 Leadership Programme and added a Village 2 Village Guidebook for Community Leaders to support the 90:90:90 agenda and build on the 'I know my HIV status, do you?' campaign that saw many leaders across our operational communities and countries lead by example and get tested themselves.

Finally, Ashikulume/Ngatitaure/Let's Talk kick-started its outreach in Zimbabwe at the end of the year with an exciting package of IEC to get young people engaging on their constitution, with SAfAIDS focus on health rights and youth advocacy.

The Importance of Water: An HIV and WASH Bi-Directional Guide

For many of us across Africa, December is a time of rain. This rain is needed for our crops, our livestock and of course our day-to-day wellbeing.

For people living with HIV, access to water is very critical and SAfAIDS have been working with WaterAid to help programmes on the ground better integrate their efforts around Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and HIV. We did this, as always, through consultation in four southern African countries where WaterAid are programming: Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia. It was the community level dialogues that indicated the need for a field-savvy guide. With backing from Anglo America, SAfAIDS and WaterAid pulled together information to form the Guide.




During ICASA SAfAIDS hosted two days of stakeholder and community dialogues in and around the ICASA venue. One of the last ones we held was titled "Integrating WASH and HIV: Towards Improved Health Outcomes". We put together a very Knowledgable Panel with representatives from SNV, CAFOD, FAO and a local Swaziland partner Nazarene Compassionate Ministries.


The guide starts with our global targets and makes the link to PLHIV:

 

Emerging from community level are four solution areas to focus on (and give lots of practical advice, informatics and links to assist in these areas):



We conclude with some tried and tested tools, including some case study sharing, to encourage good practice on the ground. Want to know more, or how to obtain one of these guide? Get in touch info@safaids.net

As this is the last post for the year, wishing you all that you would wish for yourself.

Penultimate Post for 2015 - A Leadership Master Class

So ICASA has come and gone. Wow! In its wake we have the memory of two wonderful book launches. Let me share a little of one here.


Thanks to ongoing Irish Aid support to SAfAIDS, who are tasked to capacity build others in the HIV and SRHR sector, we put together the first in a series of booklets around Leadership in the not-for-profit sector!

The Leadership and Management of NGOd and CBOs is a reference book for both young and seasoned NGO leaders and managers. It covers a six step framework (the last one being 'never stop assessing and evaluating!'.




The foreword from SAfAIDS Executive Director, Lois Chingandu, shares a little on why we have started this Master Class Series.



Want to know more about this material, and how SAfAIDS can support you and your organisation on these issues, get in touch with us info@safaids.net

Joining The Dots: Amazing Abstracts @ICASA

One of the many exciting aspects of this years ICASA are the abstracts.

They are many, diverse and detailed. Some will be presented in person at the abstract sessions but MANY MORE will presented as posters.

If we don't make the effort to see these posters we may be missing some rich research.

I perused the list (my track has over 150, WOW) and was fascinated by the amount of interesting research that is going on (and the number of potential collaborations to be had if we join-them-all-up). If you are looking for impact, you need to get yourself down to the poster displays and start joining-the-dots.

SAfAIDS are presenting a good number of posters- there must be something in here that interests you? Take a quick look ahead of time- and come talk to the authors to find out more.

 SAfAIDS Young for Real Model- homegrown in Zimbabwe, and now operating in six countries in the region :D 

 Healthy collaborations- an extra pair of hands with Aids Accountability International on the situation in prisons regarding SRHR- it's a first step towards a broader scorecard survey! 

Both these papers talk to improving services for ALL- a step by step process to ensuring no-one is left behind! 

 SAfAIDS YPISA Model on adolescent sexual and reproductive health- to change we must first begin, within! Our peer educator model- get to know it, it works :D 

We put together an awesome bi-directional guide for programmers in both the WASH and the HIV sector. This showcases the wider dialogue model process in developing this resource. 

This poster unpacks Zimbabwe's hot spots on risky health behaviour, great if value for money, efficiency and effectiveness are your thing (of course they are, right?)

This poster looks specifically at the mining sector, with a special focus on TB issues amongst mine workers and their families. 

SAfAIDS @ ICASA 2015

It is all GO here at SAfAIDS. We have Condomise at our Resource Centre training ICASA Volunteers.

We even have a book launch :D That's just what we do!

So, come and join the Vibrant SAfAIDS@ICASA Series of Events for Rich, Topical and Progressive Knowledge Exchange and Dialogue. Please confirm your attendance at any of the sessions you are interested in, by sending an email to icasa@safaids.net.  Admission is absolutely FREE!

SEE YOU THERE :D