This activity relates to other activities in AB (7727. 9060, 9061, 9063).

The Abstinence and Risk Avoidance for Youth Program (ARK) is a five-year initiative implemented by World Vision Inc. (WV), in partnership with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Communication Programs (CCP) in Tanzania, Kenya and Haiti and funded by USAID through the President's Emergency Plan. In Tanzania, ARK is implemented in five districts: Monduli, Hai, Bukoba rural, Handeni and Karagwe. The goal of the program is to strengthen HIV prevention through the promotion of positive social norms that reduce the risk of HIV infection among youth aged 10-24 years — primarily through abstinence and mutual monogamy while creating supportive family and community environments.

During FY 2006, the ARK program made significant achievements. To promote healthy sexual behavior among youth, over 400 young people were trained as peer educators and coaches to promote AB behaviors among their peers, reaching 20,210 youth. By the end of September 2006, this number is expected to exceed the annual target of 34,572. To promote a supportive family and community environment for youth to practice AB behaviors, the program mobilized and trained 484 parents and responsible adults to educate other adults to support youth to make healthy choices that prevent transmission of HIV. As a result of the training, parents engaged youth and other adults in dialogue meetings including 12 Common Ground Melting Pot (CGMP) meetings and a host of other outreach activities, reaching over 3,800 people by end of July 2006.

During this period, ARK also worked with over 100 primary and secondary schools, trained 66 schoolteachers and established 72 health education clubs. The teachers conducted orientation sessions for staff and school boards to introduce them to ARK and their role in supporting the program. Within the schools, they also supported a wide range of intra and inter-schools activities such as debates, drama and music festivals and essay writing competitions focused on AB prevention messaging. In addition to school based activities, ARK staff mobilized and trained 180 leaders from various faith groups to disseminate the ARK messages among their congregations and other networks. ARK initiated radio discussion programs through three radio stations, namely; Radio Maria, Radio Aboud and Orkonerei Radio. Over 30 "listener" groups were established. These groups enabled young people and parents to initiate and sustain discussions about sex issues and HIV prevention.

During FY 2007, the ARK program will be involved in a rigorous campaign to expand its interventions to additional geographic locations and to reach youth and adults who were not reached in the past year. The program will expand from 13 to 18 divisions and establish additional partnerships with CBOs, FBO and government structures in the five districts. The three components of focus include:

1) To strengthen youth capacity to practice AB behaviors. Ten new youth advisory groups (YAGs) and 50 youth action groups will be established, while 10 existing YAGs will be strengthened. The YAGs and youth action groups will provide participating youth with training in interpersonal communication, life skills and transformational development, and support to develop and roll out personal and group development plans. Out-of-school youth will be targeted through the YAGs, theater and listener group activities and a referral network will be established to enable them to access services including counseling and testing in private and public health facilities in the five districts. To support the various YAGs, the program will extensively disseminate the ARK-branded, facilitation guides and existing resource materials, and assist the groups to develop action plans for rolling out training and outreach activities to reach 73,000 youth;

2) To increase capacity of families, CBOs and FBOs to support abstinence and faithfulness among youth. Ten new parent advisory groups (PAG) and 25 parents' action groups will be established, while two existing PAGs and one existing district advisory committee (DAC) will be strengthened. Through these groups, 570 parents and responsible adults will be oriented to the program and trained in HIV prevention, to include information on sexuality and transformational development, as well as the development and roll out of action plans. Fifty community leaders and 50 church leaders will be mobilized to form Community Care Coalitions and to disseminate AB messages through their local networks. The leaders will facilitate 90 youth-adult dialogues and 20 CGMP meetings to promote communication

between youth and adults and adoption of AB behaviors. The program will sensitize 25 youth service providers to AB, and encourage them to provide more youth friendly services.

In order to build the capacity of all individuals involved in the program to disseminate accurate HIV and AB messages and provide effective coaching and mentoring for youth, the ARK program will strengthen, through refresher training, the capacity of 10 national master trainers who will in turn train 25 district-level trainers. The district-level trainers will conduct downstream training for 125 district facilitators, who will train/orient a further 1,850 action group members and volunteers (coaches and peer educators). The recently completed facilitation guides for youth and adults will be translated into Swahili. These will be mass produced and used extensively to strengthen communication about sexuality and to promote the AB behavior. To assure quality, during training all trainers and facilitators will be provided with a self-assessment tool that ARK has recently developed to gauge their performance. The ARK program team will provide supportive supervision to ensure the quality of the training.

In an effort to strengthen the on-going dialogue about HIV prevention and the broader issues of sexuality, the ARK program team will expand radio programming to reach all five districts, including the current three districts. All radio programming will be undertaken in collaboration with the new Strategic Radio Communication Project (STRADCOM). Two additional radio stations will be identified to broadcast programs targeting communities in the Kagera region, while activities with the existing three will be strengthened. Once established, the five radio stations will broadcast four radio spots and 130 discussion programs throughout the year. Four new radio spots and a serial radio drama will be produced and an additional 12 listener groups will be established;

3) To create an enabling environment for AB behaviors. In order to strengthen the partnership with the Government of Tanzanian, 25 additional government representatives will be sensitized at district, division, ward and village levels to generate their support. This will include training in education and communication regarding sexuality and HIV prevention to improve their skills in advocating for AB behavior change.