Project Description

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

AED is a longtime partner of the Johns Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP), having collaborated with JHU/CCP on the Population Communication Services (PCS) project since its inception in 1982. PCS provides technical assistance, training and financial support to agencies in more than 65 countries. Their technical foci includes support to People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), destigmatization of HIV/AIDS, youth reproductive health, qualitative research and analysis, HIV/AIDS counseling, interpersonal communication and couneling (IPC/C), democracy & governance and IEC training.

AED continues to work closely with JHU as a sub-contractor under the PCS V project (1996-2002.) The AED/PCS team brings strong information, education and communication (IEC) skills in the areas of training, strategy development, institutional capacity building, qualitative research and community mobilization. Specific technical areas of expertise of the AED/PCS team include the following:

Family Planning
HIV/AIDS prevention
Interpersonal communication and counseling
Integrated women's health
Participatory Learning & Action (PLA)
Girls'education
Youth reproductive health
Democracy and governance
Materials development for community health workers
Research on the cost effectiveness of IEC interventions

Technical assistance is provided worldwide. In Latin America, current IEC activities center around work with the Ministry of Health on their HIV/AIDS national campaign. In the past, AED/PCS has provided technical assistace for interpersonal communication interventions in Nicaragua and Peru, in addition to regional training workshops in IEC program design and management.

In Africa, AED/PCS has worked in Cameroon and Kenya designing and field-testing a training curriculum for Participatory Learning & Action in collaboration with the Centre for African Family Studies. AED/PCS is working with youth reproductive health and girls' education issues in Ghana and Kenya, respectively. In Rwanda, the team is providing technical assistance dealing with the care and support of PLWHAs and destigmatization of HIV/AIDS in addition to providing training support to the Gacaca project. In Nigeria, AED/PCS is working closely with a local youth based NGO to train counselors to work on a HIV/AIDS hotline in Lagos. In South Africa, AED/PCS worked with another local NGO to train HIV/AIDS counselors for a 24-hour hotline based in Johannesburg. In Burkina Faso, AED/PCS served as a co-organizer of the First Conference on Men's Participation in Reproductive Health in Francophone Africa. In Senegal, the team helped design and provide training on SCOPE, an interactive IEC planning software. AED also developed materials for community health workers in Senegal.

In Ethiopia and Rwanda, the AED/PCS team facilitated IEC training workshops as a first step to build a core group of communication managers capable of strategically planning and managing IEC interventions.

In Europe, AED/PCS collaborated with the International Centre for Migration and Health (ICMH) and various United Nations agencies to conduct the first-ever nationwide survey of reproductive health knowledge, attitude and practices in Albania.

The AED/PCS team consists of a Project Coordinator, a Senior Program Officer,two Program Officers, a Program Associate and a Program Assistant. There is also Senior Program Manager who is based in the AED/PCS Rwanda Office Additional assistance is provided by consultants and other AED technical staff as needed. The team is fluent in several foreign languages, including French, Spanish, Kinyarwanda (Rwanda), Portuguese, Dutch, Igbo (Nigeria), and Swahili.