Africa Alive!

Africa Alive! is the National Concept Owner (NCO) for dance4life in Kenya.

Africa Alive! is a regional youth-serving organization started in 1998 with a vision to build and empower a healthier HIV/AIDS free generation of African youth. The organization currently has chapters in four African countries namely; Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Africa Alive! Works directly with young people and with other youth serving organizations to empower young people to effectively respond to the challenges of RH/HIV/AIDS. The mission of Africa Alive! is to promote positive behavior change among young people through advocacy, empowerment, partnership and resource/community mobilization, in order to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The initiatives developed and undertaken by Africa Alive! over the past years have adopted the strategic approach of creating a favourable environment for, and promoting broad based community discourse on healthy and high risk sexual behaviors and ARH. The organization’s mandate promotes the full participation of young people at every level of programme implementation. The audience and message strategy for Africa Alive! employs the Enter-educate approach.

This approach combines entertainment and education to attract the attention and provide a forum for delivering behaviour change messages. Africa Alive! reaches African youth by tapping into popular, creative channels of communication that appeal to youth in Africa and all over the world such as;
• Radio and TV drama that help educate and promote safe behaviours by depicting and discussing HIV/AIDS prevention and dealing with the decision-making process regarding sexual activity
• Puppetry- using puppetry and folk media as an entertainment and educational tool of reaching the youth with appropriate messages on their reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention, including community sensitization and mobilization on the uptake of other RH services such as STI screening, FP services and VCT.
• Traveling road shows (music performance and quiz) that reach both urban and rural areas, getting youth involved in talking about HIV/AIDS
• Radio and TV variety/talk shows with phone-ins, discussions, and mini-draws addressing HIV/AIDS
• Peer education outreach in schools
• Training and working with young music artiste and club DJs as youth advocates on RH/HIV/AIDS issues and
• Comics with HIV/AIDS prevention messages.
• Sporting events with prevention messages at break, on tickets, and at HIV/AIDS information booths in and around the venue.

Through capacity building initiatives, Africa Alive! staff have received training in various aspects of reproductive health project management, including programme and project design and implementation, research, M&E, and behavior change communication.

Africa Alive! is a grass roots organization, which supports hands-on experience, and working with young people on the ground in implementing behavior change communication programmes.