Young people in Ethiopia get support to fight HIV and AIDS

See also

Exchange paper: Opportunities to scale up participatory approaches for youth and media (PDF 8 pages, 120 KB)

Exchange presentation: Opportunities to scale up participatory approaches (Powerpoint, 50 KB)

Links

AIDS Resource Center (ARC), Ethiopia

UNICEF

Meeting report March 2004

Youth participation around HIV and AIDS was the focus of a national stakeholder and planning meeting in Addis Ababa in March 2004. Young people, including representatives from Anti-AIDS Clubs – of which there are more than 1300 scattered throughout Ethiopia – met with national and international stakeholders to find ways to strengthen work around HIV and AIDS.

Young people stressed the need to take a holistic approach in work around HIV and AIDS. The youth needs they identified included employment, recreation facilities and greater recognition of young people's contribution to society.

The meeting was hosted by UNICEF, the Ethiopian Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture (MYSC), and the national HIV/AIDS Prevention Council (HAPCO) as part of UNICEF's new Communication for Social Change programme. Exchange will contribute to monitoring and evaluation work and will look at ways to support the documentation and learning processes of the programme.

Overall there was general agreement that an approach to HIV and AIDS and young people needed to be flexible and develop in an associative manner – linking successful local activities together – rather than trying to roll out a top-down national programme. (See the Exchange paper on Opportunities to scale up participatory approaches for youth and media PDF, 120 KB) A number of creative communication approaches using mass and mini media were suggested during the meeting, including the use of community conversations as an approach for encouraging dialogue around cultural and traditional practices that are difficult to deal with.

The National HIV/AIDS Task Force at the MYSC together with UNICEF will take forward the planning process.

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