The Ex-volunteer Network and Afya Bomba!

(Dar es Salaam)

SPW’s second major programme is the Ex-Volunteer Network (EVN).  This programme capitalises on the experience and motivation of former SPW volunteers, who study at higher learning institutes, to implement a programme of awareness raising and service provision activities.  Activities target students of the institutes of higher learning and disadvantaged out-of-school urban young people in youth camps.

Over the past two and a half years, the EVN has been conducting a multi-media HIV/AIDS information provision programme known as Afya Bomba! (Stunning Health).  Its activities include regular out-reach seminars, education trips (e.g. to youth-friendly VCTs), evaluative forums and high profile Afya Bomba festivals, weekly radio shows, and Information Resource Centres (containing IEC materials) on the university campuses. They also ensure appropriate youth-friendly health services are more widely available to out-of-school and tertiary populations, including condoms and an EVN-led peer counselling and referral service. In collaboration with GTZ and Femina-HIP, Afya Bomba! has also been involved in a reproductive health website: www.chezasalama.com, which is maintained and updated by ex-volunteers. Outside the Institutes of Higher Learning, ex-volunteers work with youth camps (groups of disadvantaged young people) on the streets of Dar es Salaam. Current activities include Sexual Reproductive Health education and a peer-counselling service.

The network is aiming to expand both its activities and its geographical reach. Proposed new activities include entrepreneurship skills training and establishing Income Generation Projects with the youth camps, and linking University students with youth camp members to provide a basic home based care service for people living with HIV/AIDS. Geographically, SPW Tanzania would like to expand the Ex-Volunteer Network into Morogoro Region in 2006, where there are a large number of ex-volunteers currently studying at Mzumbe University and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA).