AFRICA: Award for NGO using dance in HIV prevention
NAIROBI, 18 June 2009 (PlusNews) - An initiative that uses music and dance to convey HIV prevention messages to young people, dance4life, has won an award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Communication in Africa from the African Network for Strategic Communication in Health and Development (AfriComNet)
"Adults are still guessing but dance4life has already taken a giant step," their press release quotes one young man, Mugalu, from Uganda, as saying. "Any programme designed without youth cannot bear results, and now dance4life has become my hope and I pray it grows bigger." People younger than 25 account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide, according to UNAIDS.
dance4life won in the category, 'best multi-channel strategy, campaign or tool', for its innovative use of local dancing in re-energizing existing responses. The award was presented on 12 June in the Namibian capital, Windhoek.
The organization has a presence in seven African countries - Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe - where it reached up to 150,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 19 in 2008.
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