In 2012, the Corridors of Hope III (COH III) project will work with local partners, including the District Health Offices (DHO) to deliver comprehensive HIV prevention services, scale up innovations launched, and consolidate activities and services with a focus on quality. Geographically located in border/corridor communities, COH III will provide services to the populations whose behaviors put them at risk through inconsistent use of condoms, multiple concurrent sexual partnerships, transactional sex, intergenerational sex, gender-based violence, and abuse of alcohol. Among those who receive the services are sex workers, truck drivers, casual laborers, in- and out-of-school youth, migrant laborers, cross-border traders, teachers, and businessmen and women.

HIV counseling and testing and STI screening and management, will be coupled with information about family planning, TB and malaria screening and provisions of referrals for male circumcision increasing impact through strategic coordination and integration. Focusing primarily on women, economic strengthening activities will include training to improve production of food and starting small income generating activities to reduce household insecurity and vulnerability to HIV transmission.To improve metrics, monitoring and evaluation, and research and innovation, COH III will identify studies to be undertaken in 2012 based on an evaluation framework developed in 2011.To build sustainability and encourage country ownership, COH III will develop a sustainability plan based on a qualitative study undertaken in FY11, with goals and activities to be started in FY12 and carried on to the end of the program. COH III will continue to collaborate with the DHOs to increase impact through strategic coordination and integration.

COH III will continue to create social environments that support and encourage individual change by challenging negative social norms and behaviors that put individuals and communities at risk of HIV infection. This requires that community members themselves drive the identification of their needs and develop appropriate responses. With technical support from COH III, Interventions will strive to increase understanding of key behaviors driving HIV transmission, thus creating a sense of real personal risk. COH III interventions will take the next step to transfer necessary skills to individuals and communities to adopt more healthy behavior, thus helping to reduce the risks of HIV infection.

COH IIIs partner, ZINGO, will continue to take primary responsibility for implementing activities promoting abstinence and being faithful and will target girls and boys in school and/or attending places of worship. Implementing activities through local FBOs/CBOs ZINGO will build organizational capacity and instilling ownership of programmatic interventions. ZINGO takes a family-centered approach by developing skills among parents to improve communication with each other and among their children to identify the risks of early, unprotected sex. ZINGO will continue training Youth Adult Mentors (YAMs)--predominantly parents, teachers, community and religious leaders, and youth peer educators, to use participatory methodologies to work with anti-AIDS clubs in schools and youth worship groups around HIV/ AIDS, STI education and gender equity. Through these sessions, young people will develop positive attitudes about their sexuality and acquire life skills to negotiate early sexual debut and maintain and/or resume sexual abstinence.

ZINGO will also engage young people in sports and community volunteer service learning activities to provide them with an opportunity to acquire essential like skills. Such skills will instill self-esteem and confidence in young people and empower them to make healthy life choices.

Through monthly meetings, reports and site visits with CBOs/FBOs and monthly compilation of all COH III data collection forms, COH III will track progress at all sites.

In FY 2012, COH III will continue to provide HTC at its 10 sites. The HTC will target those whose behaviors put them at risk for HIV transmission. Historically, COH has targeted PEPFAR-defined most at risk populations (MARPs) primarily sex workers and their clients. However, acknowledging the generalized nature of the HIV epidemic in Zambia, COH III will provide HTC to those practicing most at risk behaviors (MARBs) such as inconsistent condom use, multiple concurrent sexual partnerships, transactional sex, intergenerational sex, gender-based violence, and abuse of alcohol. Therefore, in addition to sex workers, those targeted will include truck drivers, casual laborers, in- and out-of-school youth, migrant laborers, cross-border traders, teachers, and businessmen and women.

By the end of FY 2011, COH III will have provided HTC to 50,000 individuals27,800 men, 22, 200 women. Of these, 7% of the men and 10% of the women were HIV+. Within this total, 500 are sex workers, 1,000 are truck drivers, and 6,500 are mobile populations.

HTC will continue to be provided at the COH III Wellness Centers, through mobile services set up at villages or gathering places, and through the newly initiated door-to-door approach. The HCT teams at the sites work closely with the behavior change teams who, among other things, develop an awareness of the importance of learning ones HIV status.

In FY 2012, the numbers of clients receiving HTC through these modes are projected to be 12,000, 24,400, and 13,600 respectively. Thus the services are initiated by both clients and the provider.

In FY 2011, COH III trained 145volunteer lay counselors in psychosocial counseling and HIV testing using the rapid test. COH III provided refresher training to 20 health care providers. In FY 2012, COH III will provide support and supervision to these individuals.

The District Health Offices provide COH with HIV test kits and STI drugs and ensure quality in the testing by monthly reanalyzing 10% of the tests. The sites report their testing data to the DHOs for integration into the national information system.

COH III will continue to implement a quality improvement strategy initiated in FY 2010 to improve the efficacy of the referral system.

Implementing its Behavior Change and Social Mobilization Strategy, COH III concentrates on individuals whose behaviors put them at risk for HIV transmission. Some are in the PEPFAR-defined most at risk populations (MARPS) such as sex workers, truck drivers, and mobile populations. However, in these corridor communities, there are many others whose behavior puts them at risk. Among these most at risk behaviors (MARBs) are inconsistent use of condoms, excessive alcohol use, domestic violence, intergenerational sex, multiple concurrent sexual partners, and certain cultural practices.

COH III other prevention activities will continue to challenge the acceptance of these at risk behaviors by using approaches to enable communities to identify practices negatively impacting them and adopt more healthy behaviors. Participatory, evidence-based methodologies such as Stepping Stones and REFLECT will continue to be used with communities.

The abuse of alcohol and domestic and sexual violence contribute to potential risk of HIV infection. COH III will develop a simple alcohol and domestic violence screening tool to be used in the COH Wellness Centers. Change agents will be trained to use these tools in communities.

With continued technical support through ROADS II, the new economic strengthening component, as a prevention strategy, will expand. Group savings and loans associations (GSLA) will be established, members trained to improve food production, start small income generating activities and adopt robust saving habits and productive behaviors to cope with future shocks.

COH III will continue to promote correct and consistent use of female and male condoms and the establishment of condom outlets at locations frequented by sex workers and their clients. The Behavior Change and Social Mobilization teams will continue to inform and refer community members to COH IIIs Wellness Centers for services: HIV TC, STI screening, family planning, TB screening, and malaria treatment.

COH III will continue to develop modes for sharing the communities experiences and successes. Communities will develop community radio programs and listening groups; write their own Most Significant Change stories; and contribute to the development of IEC materials.