Life Vanguards

Life Vanguards engages the services of PLWH in establishing and building the capacities of PLWH support groups in six communities in neighbouring Osun State. The primary medium is interpersonal communication and the key strategy is participation. The workshop is facilitated by experienced trainers living with HIV/AIDS in the country. It is based on the "Positive Development" Training Manual of the Global Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS (GNP+); the SAT Publications manuals of coping mechanisms and survival skills; as well as the Liverpool Associates in Tropical Health (LATH)/Department for International Development (DFID) Caring Together Manual for PLWH. Participants are expected to thereafter apply skills learned at the workshop in the administration of their respective groups.

LIVA has also developed and carries out various youth development initiatives that aim to foster education, awareness, and empowerment about sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. Diverse communication strategies are used (and described in detail on the LIVA website); examples include:

• Peer health education: structured training programmes for in and out of school young people to become peer health educators, volunteers and youth health workers both in the schools and local communities in Nigeria. As part of the Teens Outreach Programme, LIVA officers engage students in various schools during the morning assembly to deliver short talks on health- and development-related issues. The youth are then empowered to lead the talk after 3 months of mentoring.
• Services such as voluntary confidential counseling and testing (VCCT), a support group, youth centre, and a youth friendly clinic
• A campus youth forum that uses strategies such as volunteerism and team participation; production of information, education and communication (IEC) materials; developing interpersonal skills through the organisation of social activities like debates, youth camping, and educational talks; showing concern for physically challenged youths by working in partnership with various disabled people’s organisations; use of radio and television programmes to create awareness of young people’s rights and privileges; regular publication of the magazine - “Youth Alive”; and excursions/visits to historical and tourism centres.

Examples of some of the organisation’s other activities include:

• Assessment and advocacy visits to stakeholders and gatekeepers in different communities.
• Community mobilisation and sensitisation through a weekly radio programme titled "Fun Ojo Ola Won" meaning "For Their Tommorow"
• A statewide stakeholders consultative forum held to elicit their cooperation for and commitment to the project.
• Community sensitisation seminars for people in Ikire, Ile-Ife, Iwo and Osogbo communities.
• Convening of inaugural meetings of newly established PLWH groups in the concerned communities.

HIV/AIDS, Youth.

LIVA's mission is to “invest in youths and channel their potentials for sustainable human development through innovative programmes, projects and strategies in Nigeria and beyond.” Other objectives include:

• enabling PLWH to live positively by building their capacity through training and seminars
• facilitating access to anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs at subsidised cost
• affiliating the support groups with the national umbrella body - the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWHAN)
• counseling and providing support for members of the groups as well as people in their respective communities
• enabling the support groups to gain both national and international recognition in the hope that they might thereby benefit from HIV/AIDS-related programmes and activities outside of their communities
• building their capacities to contribute more meaningfully to HIV/AIDS interventions in their communities and beyond by accessing funding and other resources to operate independently.