Over the past two year The African Pulse has formalised some strategic partnerships positioning the charity at the cutting edge of service delivery in Africa for vulnerable children and communities through the use of multi-media. This has led to us securing European Union funding to run a 3 year HIV and AIDS campaign across Southern Africa. This project is called YAX - Youth Action Xchange, partly funded by the European Commission.
The African Pulse educational material on HIV and AIDS and life skills is also currently being realigned and launched to reach millions of African youth through mobile technology.
Together with our partner, Gemin-i (www.gemin-i.org), we are working towards innovating, designing and producing different ways to create better support systems and services to the most poor, isolated and vulnerable children in Africa and to provide effective awareness about HIV to both children in Africa and Europe. Gemin.i is our key partner based in the UK. The aim of the YAX project in partnership with Gemin.i is to raise awareness and generate understanding amongst young people in the European Union about the global HIV and AIDS epidemic and to mobilise greater support for collaborative action. This will be done by using innovative web 2.0 technology and new media to better integrate the teaching of HIV&AIDS awareness into the formal education sector. Using this web technology it will also link children in Europe with children in Southern Africa to share information and experiences about living in a world with HIV&AIDS. The aim is further to mobilise young people to work together to take action through community campaigns and by engaging with and influencing policy makers.
The project will get participating student to engage in the following activities, via an online and mobile phone community:
- Understanding the global HIV&AIDS epidemic
- Exploring attitudes in the local community
- Understanding current interventions and the role of policymakers
- Conducting interviews with policymakers
- Collaborating and sharing knowledge with partner schools across Europe and in southern Africa
- Designing campaigns and taking appropriate actions to be shared with other participating schools in Europe and southern Africa
- Voicing concerns to policy makers.
