World Aids Day 2013

World AIDS Day is held on 1 December every year to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and to demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic.The day is an opportunity for public and private partners to disseminate information about the status of the pandemic and to encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care around the world, particularly in high prevalence countries.
This year’s World AIDS Day theme is: Getting to zero: zero new HIV infections, Zero discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths. The World focus for the 2013 campaign is improving access to prevention, treatment and care services for adolescents within the age range of 10 to19 years. This is a group that continues to be vulnerable despite a number of efforts to make things right for them.
The theme has three strategic directions which are getting to zero new infections, getting to zero aids related deaths and getting to zero discrimination. According to UNAIDS, the ‘getting to zero campaign’ runs up to 2015 the goals that have been set to be achieved within the period  include prevention of all new HIV infections among people who use drugs, vertical transmission of HIV eliminated and AIDS related maternal mortality reduced by half and sexual transmission of HIV reduced by half.
In Malawi, a Demographic and Health Survey that was conducted in 2012 revealed that HIV prevalence rate has reduced from more than 15% in the previous years to10.6%. Among other strategies, the CONDOMIZE Campaign is helping sexually active people from being infected with HIV and the Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (P.M.C.T) is also helping a lot as HIV free babies are born from HIV positive mothers.
Still more, the best we can do is to eliminate stigma and we should also discourage discrimination against people who are living with HIV!

Good Parenting and Prosperity

 A prosperous society is a result of good parenting. Millions of children across the globe are living and growing up without being looked after properly. The lack of good parenting skills cause a lot of problems in the society and it is not easy to mend such a society.

Children are neglected, abandoned or separated from their families as a result of a wide range of factors and most of the times children end up in institutional care centres. It is sad to note that a good number of street children that roam around in towns and cities have one or both parents living. Issues of divorce affect the wellbeing of children.

Therefore, working with parents is often the most effective way of ensuring skillful upbringing of the children. Unprotected children who live and sleep in the streets may easily fall prey to human traffickers. This type of life also exposes them to some other harsh conditions that children should be protected from.

Youth Net and Counselling (YONECO) is implementing parenting programmes that are being supported by Hivos with an aim of promoting child rights. The organisation conducts trainings to child protection workers inorder to sensitize the community on the issues pertaining to good parenting.

My plea to all stakeholders is that they should play an active role in civic educating the world so as to secure children’s future. If we want a better and prosperous tomorrow, we must first of all nurture the children today and rest will be very easy.

Children’s Concerns and Tithandizane Helpline

Children all over the world are among the most vulnerable and least able to get information, support and help when they are in need. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasises that no child should be left alone.

Children need the opportunity to get help anywhere and all times but in most cases children suffer in silence. They face different kinds of abuses from everyone around them including their parents and their close relatives.

 Upon seeing that many abused children find themselves clueless and with nowhere to seek help, YONECO introduced Tithandizane child helpline in the year 2006. This is a toll free number where there are well trained and qualified counsellors ready to help them. When children are abused or  feel that their needs are ignored or misunderstood by adults or others around them they go for YONECO’s child helpline service or they just  simply dial 80001234. The helpline being a toll free number, it gives a chance to those children who cannot afford to pay for the calls.

Adults who also have the welfare of children at heart use this number to tip YONECO on the abuses that are being faced by a child or children in their areas.

 The service also involves outreach activities whereby a helpline team of counsellors go out to different localities to conduct outreach activities. The aim is to reach out to children who are unable to reach the service through phone either due to lack of knowledge of the service or because they cannot manage to find a phone to call the helpline number. Furthermore, other children do not report different kinds of abuses they face in their day to day lives because they are not aware of the rights which the constitution bestowed on them.  Thus, inconsideration of these aforementioned factors, YONECO goes out to the areas with fully packed messages for the leaders of tomorrow. This is a commendable effort to ensure that all children in this country are given an opportunity to speak out their concerns and be heard as well.

 Ever since this innovation came into play, a lot of children who were facing different kinds of abuses have been bailed out from the hardships after they or someone called the helpline.

Let them speak out as the Tithandizane Helpline does in creating the proper channels for their voices to be heard!!!

16 DAYS OF ACTIVISM AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE 25th November - 10th December, 2013

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is a global campaign to raise awareness about violence against women and its impact on a woman’s physical, physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being. The 16 Days of Activism begins on 25^th November on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and ends on10 December on Human Rights Day.

These two dates highlight that violence against women is a human rights abuse. This year’s theme for the campaign is “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s challenge Militarism and end Violence against Women”.

The commemoration of the 16 Days Activism calls for actions leading to the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls through raising awareness, strengthening work on gender based violence and establishing clear links between local and international efforts in ending violence in the world.

We invite community members and organisations to coordinate or participate in an event to unite in the struggle against the violation of women’s rights. During the 16 days, activists around the world use the campaign to raise awareness about the prevalence and devastating impact of gender based violence, to celebrate achievement that have so far been made by the Women’s Rights Movements, challenge policy and practices that allow women to be targeted for acts of violence.  Furthermore, the campaign is also used to demand that violence against women should be recognized as an abuse of human rights.

Take action in eliminating Gender Based Violence Against Women

Education and social development.

The importance of education is widely known and its value extends from an individual to members of the individual’s community. What the children learn trickles down to others as well in their communities.

Even before a child reaches a higher level with his or her studies, there are always numerous fruits of her schooling no matter how few the years of schooling are. For instance, most children in Malawi learn a lot about issues of health and hygiene tips from school and in the process, this knowledge also trickles down to their friends even to other family members.

Education is a right as enshrined in our Constitution on Section 25 (1) where it stipulates that ‘all persons are entitled to education’.  Further to this, the right to education is internationally recognized as defined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Every child has the right to education but a lot of children and young people out there fail to access it. Education does a lot to an individual and denying some children this important tool is indeed killing their future. A person who is educated is more likely to be aware of his/her rights and an educated person is always in a better position to stand up for his or her rights. Thus, education makes people more aware of their rights and they easily detect someone’s attempt to infringe up on their rights. People who underwent formal schooling always demand their rights when they are being denied.

Education also opens up a window of opportunities and instills in them confidence and enthusiasm to create and utilize the opportunities.

There are so many reasons why many children are failing to go to school and the reasons include the following;

Firstly, there is an issue of lacking financial support to pay tuition fees and the prohibitive costs of uniforms and other school materials do not help matters either. Due to poverty, some young boys and girls find jobs so that they can support their parents. Furthermore, due to limited financial resources some parents put their emphasis on the education of boys than girls. When they do not have enough money to send both a boy and a girl to school, they prefer to send to school a boy than a girl. This sex preference on whose education to support always put girls at a disadvantage and this eventually fuels early marriages between adolescent girls and older men.

Secondly, long distances to and from school is another major setback in the effort of ensuring that children are getting proper education. Some families keep their children at home if they feel the journey to and from school is too long or that it is dangerous for children to walk.

Emergencies, conflicts and civil wars as well as natural disasters prevent a lot of children around the world from acquiring some education.

Education being a very important tool for the well being of an individual, there is need for deliberate efforts to deal with or safeguard our children against things that prevent them from going to school.