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 Tanzania is engaged.

Africa Media Group
The Africa Media Group's priority audience is youth aged 10-24, followed by decision-makers, parents, religious leaders, community leaders, and the general public. For AYA, the group advocates raising awareness of ASRH issues among youth and the public at large. Using television, they provide a forum for discussion, debate, dialogue and information sharing on issues about adolescent sexuality, HIV and STI prevention, teen pregnancy, and abortion. In collaboration with Independent Television, Africa Media Group will also promote laws, policies, and cultural practices to positively influence the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents in Tanzania.

CHAWAKUA
CHAWAKUA focuses on providing out-of-school youth and community members in Arusha Municipality with information on ASRH and life-planning skills in order to promote positive attitudes and safer sexual practices. The strategies they use for AYA include community mobilization and advocacy, life-planning skills education, peer education, entertainment-education in the form of drama, and links to mass media. CHAWAKUA will also link with vocational training programs to integrate ASRH into their existing activities.

Infectious Diseases Centre
The Infectious Diseases Centre will work to scale up ASRH services in Dar es Salaam. Located in Ilala (one of the three districts in Dar es Salaam), this public-owned facility is used by youth for STI management and HIV voluntary counseling and testing. The Centre also conducts research on adolescent sexual behavior and its outcomes. It is the only specialized ASRH site among 56 existing public health service delivery points in the city and thus will become a model facility, where service providers and representatives of other public sector programs can visit to observe best practices. With AYA support, the Centre will expand its service to accommodate more youth from the other two districts. By replicating this model in three other municipal health facilities, an estimated 100,000 youth will be served by the end of the project, or 10% of the area's intended audience. As AYA provides more youth in the city with ASRH information and skills, the Centre will increase its technical and facility capacity to effectively respond to the increased demand for ASRH services. To reach additional numbers of adolescents, particularly young men, the Centre will use alternative, mobile service outlets, including peer providers and services at national and sporting events.

Marie Stopes Tanzania
Marie Stopes Tanzania will strengthen stationary and mobile services in six of their existing integrated service delivery sites and establish a new outreach site in Sirari, an underserved commercial township on the border with Kenya. The group will collaborate with youth-serving organizations to promote services, and help deploy peer promoters to conduct activities at school and workplaces in the seven communities.

Ministry of Health
The Reproductive and Child Health Section of the Ministry of Health will partner with AYA and take a lead role to adapt the National Training Guide for ASRH and develop a minimum package for high quality youth-friendly services. The Section will also set up and manage a national resource center for ASRH to help build capacity for youth-friendly services, particularly in public health facilities.

Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam
Using an interactive program format, Radio Tanzania will focus on ASRH policy and program issues as well as contribute to adolescents' behavior change. The weekly, 30-minute program alternates its focus each week with programs focusing on policy and advocacy issues such as early marriage or the right to education. Alternate weeks' programs will provide behavior change communication to encourage protective behavior such as delaying sexual activity, consistently using condoms, or seeking reproductive health services. Similarly, the focus audience will alternate depending on the subject matter, and will include parents, teachers, policy makers and community leaders.

Save the Children of Tarime (SACHITA)
SACHITA will focus on in- and out-of-school youth in Tarime and provide them with information to increase their knowledge and health-seeking skills related to ASRH, via life-planning skills education, entertainment-education, peer promotion, and links with mass media. In addition, SACHITA will work with the community to help end the harmful traditional practice of female genital mutilation by promoting alternative rites of passage in its place.

Tanzania Gender Networking Programme
The Tanzania Gender Networking Programme advocates for mainstreaming gender and ASRH issues among AYA's country partners in all 10 project districts. They will also build the capacity of AYA partners to include a gender perspective in their activities and document the process.

Tanzania Youth Aware Trust (TAYOA)
To improve adolescent health, TAYOA works with out-of-school youth in Ilala, Temeke, and Kinondoni in Dar es Salaam using life-planning skills education, peer education, and media (such as videos) to help decrease the incidence of STI/HIV and unwanted pregnancies. Their behavior change communication activities help link youth to the Infectious Diseases Centre and UMATI. TAYOA also conducts community mobilization activities and work with parents to increase community support for ASRH.

Television and Radio Zanzibar
These two government-owned media institutions will collaborate with other partners in Zanzibar to promote increased health knowledge, a change in attitudes, and improved existing policies to curb the spread of STIs, HIV/AIDS and teenage pregnancy. Weekly programs will focus on issues raised by youth, parents, and policy makers. Their coverage will extend to both islands of Zanzibar.

UMATI
UMATI works on three components of the AYA Tanzania program: policy and advocacy, behavior change communication, and youth-friendly services, conducting different combinations of work in the various districts. They will build coalitions for policy and advocacy of ASRH issues at national and district levels, and in selected districts they will work to promote adult understanding and support of ASRH information and services. With its vast experience in ASRH programs, UMATI will lead the way for youth-friendly services and behavior change communication, by collaborating with media and using peer counselors to conduct outreach activities to expand ASRH access and services to young people.

University of Dar es Salaam
In partnership with AYA, the University will provide high-quality, youth-friendly reproductive health services to over 50% of university students and to faculty members, and will provide age-appropriate information and services to youth from the surrounding community. In addition to clinical services, 100 university students will be trained as peer educators to provide information, counseling, and service to university, secondary and upper primary school students in the surrounding area. The University will also promote ASRH by linking to HIV voluntary counseling and testing services and participating in youth meetings.

Zanzibar Association for Children Advancement (ZACA)
ZACA focuses on in- and out-of-school adolescents, providing reproductive health information and health-seeking skills to youth in the Urban West Region of Unguja and Pemba. ZACA will take the lead role in coordinating activities among a consortium of NGOs and in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry Responsible for Youth, and the Ministry of Health. ZACA will also ensure links between activities to be carried out by Television and Radio Zanzibar and other partners' work.

Collaboration with Other Stakeholders
The AYA program will collaborate with the following agencies whose existing community-based interventions complement AYA's vision: international NGOs such as Africare, Action AID, and Save the Children Fund; United Nations agencies such as the United Nation Children's Fund, the United Nations Commission for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS; and bilateral donors such as the United States Agency for International Development, the British Department for International Development, and Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (German International Development Agency).