Get Involved

Fellow Zimbabweans do not miss out on this exciting opportunity

ICFP Youth Video Contest—deadline: June 5, 2015

The ICFP Youth Video Context was launched in 2013 to invite young people ages 18 to 25 to serve as speakers and/or moderators on youth-focused and other sessions at the 2013 conference. It was a great success, and the conference organizers are again inviting young people to create videos demonstrating their passion for family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Young people who submit winning videos will have conference registration and travel costs covered, and will play an essential role in providing a youth perspective to the program.

For more information, please click here to review the application guidelines. A flyer can also be downloaded. The deadline is June 5, 2015. The application form will be available shortly.

Watch some of the 2013 videos for inspiration!

·         Ahmed Al-Khatary, Yemen

·         Burcu Buzkurt, United States

·         Ramya Jawahar Kudekallu, India

·         Israel Oluwaseyidayo Idris, Ukraine

·         Catherine Bongka Baye, Cameroon

·         Maria Angelica Botero, Colombia

·         Isaiah Owolabi, Nigeria

To view more winning videos from the 2013 contest, visit http://fpconference.org/2013/youth/.

Questions? Please contact youth@fpconference.org.

Please also share in your networks.

HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe (Place of residence)

 

At glance, one would assume that HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe is higher in urban areas compared to rural areas. But once you get to read through these statistics you will realise that there isn't much of a difference. From my research, I have been able to establish the country's prevalence rate according to ones place of residence.

Place of Residence	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Urban	14.34	15.28	15.11	14.9	14.64	14.25
Rural	15.41	14.19	13.95	13.72	13.45	13.06
National	15.67	15.35	14.99	14.8	14.74	14.57

HIV prevalence is slightly higher in urban areas than in rural areas across all years expect in 2011. Results of the 2010-2011 Zimbabwe Health Demographic Health Survey (ZDHS) show a similar distribution but somewhat higher figures. These values should be quoted with caution because the DHS still remains the most reliable and representative population sample.

This being said, there is need for the equal distribution of ART services and etc regardless of geographical location. The concentration shouldn't be biased towards urban areas. The attention must be fair.

Invitation to attend the IDAHOT

This is a Call of Expression to attend the above mentioned International Day Against Homophobia and Trans phobia pre-event being organised to create space and inclusion for young people. The objectives of the event being:

• To increase awareness and understanding of sexual orientation, gender identity, Human Rights and Sexual Reproductive Health Rights.

• Identify the challenges and needs of young people (specifically LGBTI youth) and how these can be discussed and addressed within a human rights discourse.

• To bridge partnerships between youth movements; to support a youth advocacy agenda that strategically includes LGBTI issues and rights (also in future projects and activities)

We are currently searching for 17 enthusiastic and passionate youth on a first-come-first-served basis who would want to participate within this event from Harare Province. For those who are interested please respond to the this communication by email to ignatiouschiveso@gmail.com or ruvamiti@gmail.com or siwelacharles@gmail.com / or send a whatsup message on the following numbers +263772281752/+263772327027 as soon as you receive this message. 

Get Involved!

HIV prevalence could balloon

Encouraging songs have been sang, motivational words have be said, cheerful articles have been written on the tremendous and enormous decline of HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe. Thumps up to that! However from the research I have done, seems the prevalence rate is likely going to balloon. Currently the country's prevalence rate is pegged at 14.8 percent.

Need I say much, Please do check out the table below of the estimated HIV prevalence in adults and children 2011to 2016.

Age Group	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
15 - 49	15.67 (14.9-16.4)	15.35 (14.61-16.06)	14.99 (14.24-15.7)	14.8 (14.03-15.55)	14.74 (13.91-15.57)	14.57 (13.18-18.78)
15 - 24 (Males)	4.1 (2.96-5.74)	4.1  (3.02-5.7)	4.06 (3.05-5.57)	4.07 (3.09-5.48)	4.11 (3.16-5.44)	4.06 (-0.64-9.14)
15 - 24 (Females)	6.84 (6.19-8.2)	6.72 (6.06-8.06)	6.55 (5.88-7.86)	6.42 (5.74-7.7)	6.33 (5.65-7.55)	6.06 (-0.62-9.8)
0 - 14 (Children)	3.64 (3.28-4.01)	3.29 (2.95-3.64)	2.99 (2.99-3.34)	2.66 (2.36-2.97)	2.37 (2.09-2.65)	2.11 (1.86-2.38)

There was a decline of HIV prevalence for 15-49 age group however the decline was not statistically significant between 2012 and 2013 as the confidence intervals are overlapping. In 2013 the prevalence was 1.6 times higher in females than in males for the 15-24 age groups.

Sources of HIV infections

Although Zimbabwean citizens have been bombarded with information regarding the HIV prevalence in the country, it is also imperative that the sources of HIV infections are highlighted out explicitly as well.

HIV transmission remains predominately sexually driven. Sexually transmitted accounts fro 80 percent of infections. Majority of news infections occur in the age group 20 - 29 years. New infections are expected to come from a variety of sources.

Source                                                                             % Contribution
Low risk heterosexual                                                         57.6%
Casual heterosexual                                                            7.5%
Partners of casual heterosexual                                           18.8%
Clients of heterosexual                                                        6.4%
Men who have sex with men (MSM)                                  4.0%
Male partners of MSM                                                        2.7%
Female partners of MSM                                                    0.4%
Sex workers                                                                        1.4%
Injecting Drug Users (IDU)                                                1.1%
Partners of UDI                                                                   0.1%
Medical Injections                                                               0.1%

In overall Zimbabwe is among the several countries in Southern Africa with a HIV epidemic showing a consistent decline in prevalence over the past decade. The decline is attributed to partially to successful implementation of prevention strategies such as changes in sexual behaviours and high mortality due to low ARV Therapy (ART) coverage.

Between 1999 and 20006 less than five percent of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) had access to ART.

Get Engaged

 

Fellow Zimbabweans, Get engaged! This is a call for young people to contributes their efforts in ending child marriages.

Girls Not Bride are working on their youth engagement work and would like to gather inputs from young advocates to feed into their Global members meeting. They are trying to get a diverse range of youth to suggest their key messages and recommendations to civil society organisations working to end child marriage, in particular, how youth believe civil society could work more collaboratively with young people on child marriage policy and programming. 

Please see the request below.  

Girls Not Brides is currently exploring how young people add value to efforts to end child marriage, and what messages youth have for civil society organisations working on the issue.   

We would like to hear from a wide range of young advocates working to end child marriage via this short survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/youthvoiceschildmarriage