AYA PARTNERS AND PROJECTS

To accomplish its mission, AYA works with a range of agencies, charities and community-based organizations. The following represent several of the larger projects in which AYA Botswana is engaged.

Botswana Council of Churches
The Botswana Council of Churches will advocate integrating adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) issues into the teachings of the church. The organization will get people talking about ASRH issues at Sunday School, funerals, weddings, regular church services, and religious schools. They will advocate for consensus ASRH language in the church, and will encourage churches to offer their sanctuaries as youth activity centers and offer selected ASRH services in mission schools. The Botswana Council of Churches will support the need for ASRH policies and laws and encourage community and political support for ASRH services and resources.

Botswana Family Welfare Association (BOFWA)
BOFWA, an International Planned Parenthood Federation affiliate, will strengthen five existing youth centers and establish three new centers. BOFWA will assess how youth-friendly the centers are and make improvements accordingly. Its community-based youth service providers will increase reproductive health outreach for young people, and will also help get ASRH issues into livelihood skills development programs for adolescents.

Botswana National Sports Council
The Botswana National Sports Council will advocate mainstreaming ASRH issues in sports, to address the ASRH needs of both athletes and spectators. They will develop a policy on ASRH and sports, which will advocate providing select ASRH services in sports facilities and allocating resources for ASRH and sports programs.

Botswana National Youth Council
The Botswana National Youth Council will set up, strengthen, and support national and district level coordination, using youth advisory committees and district youth councils. It will consolidate all plans and reports from districts for AYA projects and will disseminate important documents and reports to partners and stakeholders within the NGO and CBO community. The Council will also participate in policy and advocacy efforts for AYA, to create a supportive environment for ASRH information and services. The Council will also establish district ASRH committees, work closely with the District Technical Advisor for ASRH, and participate in District Multi-Sectoral AIDS Committee meetings, acting as a liaison between the district ASRH Committee and the Multi-Sectoral AIDS Committeee.

Botswana Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA)
The YWCA, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, will improve and scale up the peer approach to counseling teens in primary, secondary, and tertiary schools in four districts: Maun, Francistown, Gantsi, Serowe Palapye and Mochudi. The YWCA's strategies include providing age-appropriate life-planning skills education in schools; peer education activities in schools and communities including condom distribution where appropriate; supporting limited mass media in coordination with the larger AYA mass media effort; using "entertainment-education"; and promoting services through referral networks.

Family Health Division, Reproductive Health Unit
The Family Health Division of the Ministry of Health will conduct YFS activities in health facilities within AYA sites. Beginning with quality assessments, and by continuously working to improve quality, the facilities will be able to provide, monitor, improve and maintain youth-friendly services in the AYA districts.

Ghetto Artists
The primary strategy of Ghetto Artists is to combine entertainment with education -- a great way to reach youth in Botswana. Their theater productions at the district level will provide ASRH messages and materials, and a video will be used in other districts which Ghetto Artists do not cover. Research on "entertainment-education" suggests that audiences learn as they are entertained; however, theater alone does not change behaviors. Therefore, Ghetto Artists work is a nice complement to the existing activities of the YWCA, the Ministry of Education, and BOFWA.

Ministry of Education
The Botswana Ministry of Education will work closely with the YWCA and a few schools, initially in four districts, to develop or strengthen existing ASRH programs and activities in primary, secondary, and tertiary schools. The project will train teachers who will, in turn, teach large numbers of in-school adolescents and peer educators about ASRH. The project expects to expand to other districts in subsequent years. The Ministry's ASRH strategies include life-planning skills training and co-curricular classroom activities, strengthening and standardizing peer education activities, developing supportive and age-approrpiate ASRH educational materials and messages for in-school adolescents, and ASRH counseling skills for guidance counselors and teachers.

Population Services International (PSI)
PSI will advertise youth-friendly services and products to promote healthy lifestyles. Through its mass media campaigns, it will focus on both in- and out-of-school adolescents. Collaborating with young people, PSI will design, pretest, produce and disseminate youth-speicfic reproductive health messages and materials for broadcast and print media. It will also use open-space advertising and throw street-party campaigns to get people talking about and sharing experiences related to ASRH issues.

Women Against Rape
Women Against Rape will establish effective youth /ASRH programs with special emphasis on sexual violence and rape within schools and the community.  They will also help women's groups lobby policy makers for policies and legislation condemning sexual violence and rape.

Collaboration with Other Stakeholders
As detailed above, AYA will involve youth, parents, community leaders, and policy makers to promote positive cultural norms about ASRH. Teachers, health providers, social workers and other health-related professionals will play major roles in implementing the program's work.

Other Government Ministries
Ministry of Health
Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs
Ministry of Local Government