It is the young who are most at risk from poverty, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in Tanzania. As a result of this, the youth are not perceived as part of a solution, rather that they are part of the problem.
Established in 1992, Student Partnership Worldwide (SPW) Tanzania encourages young people to take a proactive role in addressing the challenges they face.
The organisation’s goal is to ensure that young Tanzanians make responsible choices concerning their sexual reproductive health and have a lead role in the decision-making processes that affect their lives and their communities. It operates on the conviction that young people are simultaneously the most affected by poverty-related issues and the most essential to achieving change.
All its work is led by young people through a youth-led volunteer model which enables it to deliver full-time holistic sexual reproductive health programmes in the most remote rural communities.
The programmes reach as many as 75,000 young people each year through volunteer peer educators who have been placed in rural schools. The majority of these peer educators are Tanzanian Form 6 leavers, who conduct a range of youth empowerment activities in and out of schools. Working in these remote communities for up to seven months, they provide sexual reproductive health education and life skills training. The programmes are delivered for an annual cost of only US$9 per child and many of the volunteers go on to university and gainful employment as a result of their experience.
Through a collaborative approach, SPW Tanzania’s programmes are developed, assessed and continually refined based on broad consultation with tens of thousands of rural youth, key adults within their communities, partner NGOs and government ministry partners.
In November 2007, SPW Tanzania became the first recipient of the 2007 STARS Impact Award (http://www.starsfoundation.org.uk/recipients07.php) in the category of Education.
The Awards are given by the STARS Foundation (www.starsfoundation.org.uk), a London-based charitable foundation which works to improve the lives of disadvantaged children around the world. The annual Awards recognise three organisations operating in the fields of health, education and protection which have the greatest impact on the lives of children through their commitment to good practice. Each recipient of the award receives US$100,000 in unrestricted funding as well as consultancy support.
Since SPW Tanzania received the Award, it has made many improvements to their management and administration systems, as the Award has enabled forward planning in terms of programme activities due to guaranteed income.
The STARS Impact Award has provided SPW Tanzania with the opportunity to further expand its remarkable work. Additional volunteer peer educator activities have been organised as a result, and the sustainability strategy has also been prioritised.
Through this work, the Award has enabled the organisation to directly reach 14,400 young people, and 5,860 in its secondary target group, with life-saving messages.
The Award funding has significantly raised SPW Tanzania’s profile, regionally and internationally (for the wider benefit of SPW International), particularly in recognition for achievement, and the impact that the organisation has already had, rather than just for the work that will be done with the funding. This has been of immense value to a results-based organisation such as SPW Tanzania, and the STARS Award will continue to promote its potential to prospective partners.
SPW Tanzania’s impact-driven work on the ground has been formally and publicly recognised, which has made it easier in terms of networking at governmental levels, particularly with district and regional officers, and those at a village level including AIDS committees.
Current challenges and overcoming them
SPW Tanzania’s main challenge remains of how to encourage more girls and women to participate in their programmes, when they have few role models to aspire to, and with little time to give, due to household and agricultural activities in rural areas.
Although this sensitive issue is one that is engrained socially and culturally, SPW Tanzania has managed to address it as part of its sustainability strategy, i.e. how to make use of the existing activities that women are engaged in and targeting them appropriately, such as when they are at the market. This is made possible by the young peer educators from the local community, who truly grasp the root of such obstacles and what can be done to overcome them.
What they envision to achieve over the next few years
SPW Tanzania has been operating youth-led Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) and HIV Prevention programmes in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania for the past six years, steadily increasing scope and impact in Iringa and Mbeya regions over that time. At this key stage in its organisational development, SPW Tanzania has undertaken a full strategic review, and has ambitious plans to expand the scope and impact of its renowned Kijana ni Afya (KnA) youth peer-educator led SRH programme across the entirety of the Southern Highlands Zone (adding Ruvuma and Rukwa regions to existing operations) in the next few years.
The KnA programme is a holistic package based on best practice in youth SRH behaviour change interventions and community empowerment, delivered by young Tanzanians (Form 6 leavers aged 19-25).
Whether perceptions around HIV/Aids in Tanzania evolve over the next few years remains to be seen, but it is clear that many of the answers to Sexual Reproductive Health problems start, and can end, with the youth.
