Uganda Youth Positives (UYP) is a group of mobilized and coordinated young HIV-positives with a mission to promote the quality of life for young people living with HIV/AIDS and to reduce the HIV prevalence rate among young people. The UYP drama team conveys messages of HIV protection, anti-stigma, and discrimination in schools and communities. UYP also trains peer educators in schools who pass on messages of protection and anti-stigma to their fellow peers. This has yielded a great result of behavioral change amongst the young people.
Assess: Through UYP’s effort of mobilizing young positives and bringing them together, the positives have been able to share the challenges they face while getting access to treatment services, so the challenges act as a basis for identifying their problems and planning for them.
Plan: Uganda Young Positives (UYP) is a non-governmental organization that brings together all young people living with HIV in Uganda for action in scaling up prevention, care, and support services. UYP’s mission is:
Act: UYP’s work in the community registered success due to their continued good ties with the local council leaders mobilizing the community and HIV/AIDS partners in development, like the district HIV focal person NGO’S and CBO’S dealing in HIV/AIDS response. They worked with UYP closely in publicity and distribution of IECE materials to the community. It is through the combined efforts that UYP managed to register such response from the community.
Evaluate: UYP has a monitoring and evaluation frame in place used to measure the success of the project. A cause-and-effect diagram and monitoring plan were developed together with a performance monitoring plan to guide performance. The diagram was analyzed and best practices were documented.
The following output indicators were used to measure the above objectives:
Objective one:
The following outcome indicators were registered from the above objective:
Sustain: UYP is currently engaging in partnerships and forming coalitions with other organizations that have similar interests in health advocacy, such as Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS-UGANDA), Action Group For Health Human Rights HIV/AIDS (AGHA), Health Right Action Group (HAG), and other PHA Networks like the international community of women living with HIV/AIDS in eastern Africa (ICW.EA), and the National Forum of People Living with HIV/AIDS Networks in Uganda (NAFOPHANU). These coalitions have been formed to ensure that health is a priority in the national strategic plan and also for the meaningful involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.
The organization has been able to mobilize over 20,000 young positives countrywide with support from UNAIDS and with technical assistance from UNFPA. The mobilized young positives have been a big asset in the organization advocacy activities; as advocacy is about numbers. The mobilized young positives have also worked as figure heads to positive prevention by the young positives. UYP has been able to successfully carry out massive advocacy campaigns on treatment access and stop drug stock-outs in the districts of Kamuli, Luwero, Wakiso, and Kampala. Policy briefs have been designed, signed by stakeholders, and disseminated to policy figures at different levels like the chief administrative officers, the district health officers. Other copies have been handed to the speaker of parliament for consideration. The most recent advocacy activity on treatment access achieved the following in the Luwero district: there was a reduction of the charges for the CD4 count from 22,000/= to 11,000/=, actually by half in the government health facilities including Kasana; three young positives were taken up by the Mildmay Economic Empowerment Project and were given skills and knowledge in tailoring and later given tailoring machines to start their own businesses; in addition, gap between the health care providers and the health consumers was reduced tremendously.
