Youth to Youth Programme in Tanzania

Target group: The Youth-to-Youth initiative for sexual and reproductive health in Tanzania is a countrywide programme currently targeting adolescents aged 10-24 in the areas of Arusha, Manyara, Kilimanjaro and Tanga.


Project aims:

• To improve the sexual and reproductive health status of young people in Tanzania;
  
  
• To improve the environment for adolescent reproductive health (RH) activities in schools and local communities;
  
  
• To increase access to high quality and affordable reproductive health (RH) services including voluntary HIV testing and counselling for young people;
  
  
• To create reproductive health (RH) supplementary services in the project areas;
  
  
• To empower youth in clubs to provide replicable quality, effective and sustainable sexual and reproductive health information, education and services to adolescents and youth in order to change attitudes and behaviour towards healthy sexual life;
  
  
• To reach adolescents directly through intensive counselling and indirectly through mass and folk media;
  
  
• To enhance the capacity of young people to initiate and sustain effective reproductive health (RH) youth clubs;
  
  
• To enhance managerial, technical and institutional capacity of youth serving non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to implement Youth to Youth reproductive health initiatives;
  
  
• To produce and disseminate information, education and communication (IEC) materials on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) and to facilitate ASRH club networks;
  
  
• To enhance adolescents’ reproductive health knowledge and skills of club members and young people outside the club;
  
  
• To establish monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Progress made:

In collaboration with its partners, by the end of the year 2006 DSW had achieved the following:

• Establishment of 60 Y2Y youth clubs;
  
  
• Empowerment of existing youth clubs in the target regions;
  
  
• Trained 74 club members as Peer Educator Trainers;
  
  
• Trained 757 adolescents as Peer Educators;
  
  
• Trained 49 adolescent in Clubmangement and Leadership skills;
  
  
• Improvement of the referral network by conducting a workshop which identified referral organisations and developed referral cards and forms;
  
  
• Conducted community mobilization campaigns and education through meetings, drama and music performances and/or the distribution of IEC materials;
  
  
• Expanded access to reproductive services through condom and contraceptive distribution to the youth;
  
  
• Renovated two youth centres, including the whole construction of some parts, to give the youth a secure area for their education, information and meetings (one youth centre was renovated with the partner ELCT, and the other with the organisation UMATI);
  
  
• Supported and promoted income generating activities (IGAs) for sustainability of the youth clubs and sexual and reproductive health education and services.

Partners:

Current DSW local partners in Tanzania include:

• Evangelican Lutheran Church of Tanzania, Diocese of Arusha (ELCT). This covers the Arusha region in Arusha City Council and Arumeru areas and Manyara region in Simanjiro district

• Family Planning Association of Tanzania (UMATI) covering the Arusha region in Arusha City Council and Kilimanjaro region in Moshi Municipality and Moshi Rural

• Those in the fights against AIDS in Tanzania – Arusha (WAMATA) covering Arusha region in Arumeru district and Kilimanjaro region in Moshi Municipality and Hai district.
  
  
• Tanzania 4H: This is a youth membership NGO operating in Tanga, Arusha, Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Morogoro and Ruvuma Regions to provide pre-professional practical education to more than 34,000 youth members in and out of schools.
  
  
• Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Network (AFNET: AFNET is a membership organisation currently working in the regions of Singida, Arusha, Manyara, Dar es Salaam, Coast, Morogoro, Iringa and Dodoma (head office). The core business of AFNET is campaigning against female genital cutting, HIV/AIDS, life skills, reproductive health, civics education and couple communications.
  

Our special thanks for their most generous support of this programme go to German AIDS-Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, European Commission (EC), Alfred Biolek Foundation and HAMASIL.