Current projects- overview

In our current work, we are scaling up the community empowerment strategy that we have developed for the fight against HIV/AIDS to 10 more villages in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. This project is funded by by Care Cameroon- Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The goal of our community empowerment strategy is to get communities to take responsibility for the fight against HIV/AIDS at the local level. This contrasts with participation which implies initiation and conduction of the fight by somebody else. The COPAAP empowerment process starts with the following activities:

• Raising awareness among the community leaders about the gravity of the problem of HIV/AIDS as it concerns their communities. Success in this domain ensures that the community leaders take control of the decision to fight the pandemic.
• Helping the communities to know how to organize and to conduct the fight. This is done in seminar workshops to enable them draw up comprehensive, predominantly self-reliant anti-HIV/AIDS projects. 
• Assisting in capacity building, including training community health volunteers (CHVs) and laboratory technicians and building infrastructure.
• Establishing Village AIDS Control Centres and organizing services for community and home based care of people living with HIV/AIDS.
• Enabling groups and the community as a whole to start income generating projects, orphan and vulnerable children support programs, and community solidarity funds to fight HIV/AIDS.