ORGANIZATIONAL MAIN PROGRAMS
Agape Aids Control Programme has four main programs that contribute to its realization of the stated mission and vision statements, these main programs include the following;-
1. Child and Youth Protection; this is one of the Agape core work focusing on ensuring that children and youth are protected and supported to achieve their full developmental potential in their life. This componet involves creation of awareness on the community and child protection actors on child rights, Education support to most vulnerable children (MVC), capacity building to various actors of child protection like school teachers, and so far about 20 school and 80 teachers were capacitated to develop school based child protection policies in Shinyanga Rural and Kishapu Districts and already, each school has developed child protection policies through involving School boards/committees; The target groups under this component are children with an age range of 0-17 years and youth with an age of 15-25 years.
2. Legal Aid Services provision; under this component Agape is working to ensure all vulnerable communities have access to legal aid services for sustainable community with balanced justice system in Tanzania and no human rights violation. The target groups under this component are abused/violated Children, GBV survivors (women, children and youth), widows/widowers and PLHAs. For effective and efficiency legal aid services, Agape has a Legal and Child protection Officer and a Social Worker.
3. Prevention of Gender Based Violence, Child maariages and Early Pregnancies; under this core work, Agape works to ensure there is zero GBV tolerance in the community and people have the capacity and motive to stop child marriages and pregnancies. Currently, the Organization is implementing a two years (2014-2015) strategic intervention on "Stop Child marriages" in Shinyanga Region covering two Districts namely; Shinyanga Rural and Kishapu Districts. The project is receiving funding from Dutch Government through Terre des Hommes Netherlands. The project so far has rescued more than 200 girls - victims of child marriages of which 60 have been supported to attend one year vocational training course at Buhangija Focal Development College in Shinyanga, 49 been receiving educational support and 135 received entreprenuership skills and are being supported on small business development. The programme is intending to reach 700 girl children who are victims or at risk of child marriages. According to UN-women and UFPA 2012, Shinyanga Region ranks first with Early maariages and pregnancies rating 59% followed by Tabora 58%, Mara 55% etc.
4. HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention; this is also a main core program of our work of which Agape has bias on awareness creation on HIV/AIDS to the communities of Shinyanga. It should also be understood that Shinyanga is among of the top five Regions in Tanzania with high HIV/AIDS prevalence rate (7.4%) which is above the national average of 5.1%. In creating awareness, Agape is also sensitizing the community on proper use of condoms and in here, Agape collaborates with other organizations and relevant government departments like the Department of Health, Community development and youth department. It is under this Component, Agape has been forming change agent community based groups for awareness creation. In addition, this component cuts across to all other three main programs. For example the identified victims of child marriages and pregnancies are also sensitized and counseled to test HIV status, e.g. out of 30 victims of child marriages been supported at Buhangija College who volunteered to test their body status five were found HIV + and they have already linked to care and treatment (CTC).
APPROCHES USED TO IMPLEMENTING PROGRAMS
- Each and every core work/program, Agape has different approaches and some of the approaches are integrated in all programs. Below are some of the main approaches we use in our programs;-
Public video session (Cinema Van); we use community videos for activities related to awareness by presenting relevant films. E.g. Films explaining the causes, effects and measures on child pregnancies the film called "Usipo ziba ufa", HIV films like "Yolanda film", "Opportunistic infection diseases films", child rights films like ''mama wa kambo" etc. In all fimls been used, after presentation community members are called for an open dialogue or discussion over the respective presented films and during the dicussion recommendations and hot zones/issues are documented for advocacy and sensitization purposes.
Use of Child protection teams; Agape employs the use of CPTs from village level to District Level. Currently, 20 VDCs, 10 WCPTs and 2 DCPTs have been formed from 20 villages of Shinyanga Rural and Kishapu Districts. This approach has proved to be of validity to our program of child and youth protection because it ensures ownership and sustainability of projects, promote resource mobilization and allocation from grass root to district level, easy reporting and follow up of child abuse cases, identification of most vulnerable children, setting of community based policies and rules for child protection.
Community and victims change agent groups; The organization facilitate and sensitize communities to form community based change agent groups. For example in Shinyanga Municipal, the Organization in 2011 facilitated to the formation of three youth based CBOs made up by victims of early marriages and two groups were even able in 2012/13 to receive funding from WFT for them to carry out their activities of mobilizing their fellow youth-girls for SRH education and information, decision making capacity and building voice of saying no child marriages and pregnancies.
Other approaches been used by Agape are;- School clubs, capacity building to child protection actors, Advocacy meetings, IEC educational materials, Network and linkages building for GBV, legal aid and Child protection as well as service access to PLHAs; public meeting; media engagement; family reconciliation and re-unificcation approach for keeping the children safe at their homes
