updates

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The organization carried out activities as planned by the organization staff and volunteers. The activities included carrying out magnet theatre outreaches with mobile VCT in the community and the prisons, Mobile educative video shows at the community video dens, Training of more change agents and educators both in the prisons and at the community level, Production of the Jukwaa la Vijana news letter, organizing skills demonstration forums, Organizing youth symposium and condom distribution, open mic festivals. Apart from the above planned activities individual organization volunteers did outreaches at their backyard to reach out to the target audience effectively and efficiently.

The activities have not changed despite some adjustment like to increase the number of community theatre outreaches with VCT and reduce production of the copies of the news letter. To ensure quality in the trainings the organization adopted local and international training manuals for skills and capacity building trainings.

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The project gets technical assistance from a group of young professionals referred as research and innovation committee. Their work is to come up with innovative participatory and result oriented strategies to reach out the youth effectively and consistently with behavior change communication with an aim of influencing positive behavior among the youth.

One of the innovative ideas is the open mic competition. It is a simple concept, rappers compete against each other by drawing topics from a hat and composing a one minute rap on the spot (free style) on the topic they pick. The victor is determined by how many correct facts about the topic he/she can deliver within the time allocated to him/her. There were four main topics, STIs, HIV/AIDS, Stigma and Correct consistent use of condoms. There were seven preliminary rounds, each at different housing estates in the area. The level of competition was high and it improved significantly after the two day training on message development the participants underwent before the final event. The crowd at the venue was impressive and the community response, overwhelming. Consistency will ensure the event continues to grow both in reach, popularity and achievement.

Numbers reached:
Male: 3314
Female: 3377
Total: 6691

The inaugural Miss High school beauty pageant was held at Langa Langa High school Hall. It targeted youth in school with messages aiming to increase risk awareness in relation to HIV/AIDS. It provided a platform for up and coming artistes, most in the Open mic competition, to showcase their talent and pre test their positive message songs.
The contestants were enthusiastic and the audience that turned up was indiscriminately supportive of their efforts.

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Weekly workshops on Blogging are on going as people tackle issues on the society, HIV and comical fiction. Most of our peer educators are on face book. We are also thinking of starting a discussion forum on the REPACTED’s group page on Face book aimed at sparking debates on a range of issues facing the youth in Kenya. Due to increase number of young people interested in the idea of Blogging, we go the cyber café for the workshops. You read the individual bloggs;
• washeyg.blogspot.com,
• maddiefxm.blogspot.com,
• ericowanyama.blogspot.com,
• elseroketch.blogspot.com,
• jmilloujane.blogspot.com,
• mcjex.blogspot.com,
• wgaliabenard.blogspot.com,
• bukas-larry.blogspot.com,
• chadgianni.blogspot.com.

More activities are under way including the annual POA Youth Music Arts Awards, we are planning to reach to reach more than 10,000 young people in Nakuru and test 1000 young people. The aim of the festival is to appreciate the power of youth driven HIV and AIDS behavior change communication through creative arts.