YEI

Raising awareness in the youth community.

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Free Condoms

Receiving free condoms

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Distribution

Distributing condoms among fishermen in Kayanzi fishing village

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Kambasu

Founder of YEI

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Awareness

Kambasu leading an HIV awareness session

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Advice

Masereka gives counselling before giving an HIV test.

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Testing

Locals volunteer to be tested

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Testing

Knowing your HIV status is vitally important in preventing the spread of the virus

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Training

Training student leaders in Ihandiro Vocational school on how to lead HIV discussions in their school

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Demonstration

A young lady illustrates the proper use of condoms during the launch of trainings at Bwera community centre

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Kambasu distributing condoms to the locals

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Leaders

Kambasu & Masereka, the leaders of YEI

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Youth Empowerment Initiative

The Staying Alive Foundation have been supporting YEI since 2008. In this time YEI has reached thousands of people through its monthly radio programmes and HIV testing.

Empowering the young

Kambasu Obed, a 25-year old Ugandan, founded the Youth Empowerment Organisation after seeing too many of his family members infected with HIV, and dying soon after. With a total lack of access to information, his relatives blamed witchcraft and, instead of enrolling for anti-retroviral drugs, they resorted to traditional healers and were encouraged to marry other partners – a situation that precipitated the further spread of the virus.

Determined that this shouldn’t happen to anybody else in his community, Kambasu decided to set up his organisation to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS among young people in his community. Kambasu’s achievement in setting up YEI was not an easy feat – his community is on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, a hugely volatile region where hardly any charities operate because of the dangers of working there.

Since The Staying Alive Foundation started to support YEI in 2007, Kambasu and his colleagues have reached thousands of people through their monthly radio programme, trained more than 500 people and tested more than 1500 young people for HIV.