IYAP's New Blog

IYAP (Isiolo Youth Against Aids and Poverty) has started a new blog with the assistance of Simon Collery (who runs the blog HIV in Kenya and blogs about his visit with IYAP).

Here's their first posting:

IYAP has 12 active members who run the programme of the organization voluntarily. We are working to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids and to alleviate poverty among the youth of Isiolo and society as a whole. We are working to develop a sustainable community free from HIV/Aids and poverty.

IYAP strives to be an outstanding organization in addressing the problems relating to HIV/Aids through prevention as well as care and support for people living with HIV/Aids. The organization engages in lobbying and advocacy, networking and resource mobilization so as to address the problems that contribute to high poverty incidence, while targeting the orphaned and vulnerable children, youth and women's groups. The organization has 5 trained counselors and is headed by site coordinator. The primary targets for IYAP’s interventions are youths (in and out of school), women, orphans, vulnerable groups and the community at large.

This blog will be about our day to day work and our plans for the future, along with news and photos of some of our activities.

Visit their website: http://iyapkenya.blogspot.com/

There are many community based organizations working in Isiolo, though few do as good of work as IYAP (and some exist only on paper as a way to try and solicit funding). In the past IYAP has not only provided testing and counselling for HIV, but has also provided ARV drugs, food and care packages and small monetary assistance to people living with HIV (as funding allowed). They have also been very active in the community (especially reaching villages far from town that other CBOs and NGOs are not) teaching about public health, providing civics lessons (prior to the 2007 presidential election) and advocating for the rights of women.

Recently Liverpool VCT, the largest organisation in Kenya for training counselors and providing VCT services (including services for the deaf and blind), decided to provide IYAP with funding for their VCT services. Receiving funding from Liverpool is confirmation of the good work that IYAP is doing.