News

Schooling of indigenous girls: a small scholarships fund started

To maintain the indigenous girls in schools, reduce drop-outs and encourage them to pursue secondary and high school, AZUR Development is establishing a fund for small scholarships ranging from FCFA 20,000 to FCFA 50,000 (USD 40- USD 100) with funding from volunteers’s contributions. To contribute to this fund, please contact us.

Providers of psychosocial care for people living with HIV/AIDS trained in Lekoumou

AZUR Development and the Congolese Association for Integration of Indigenous Peoples (ACIP) have organized a training workshop for providers of psychosocial care for people living with HIV/AIDS from 02 to 04 February 2009 in Sibiti Department of Lekoumou with financial support from the Planet Wheeler Foundation. The workshop is part of the project to provide home care for indigenous women living with HIV in Lekoumou.  Indeed, till now, people with HIV, including indigenous people are not receiving any psychosocial care. Those living in rural areas, have no means to travel regularly to Sibiti for care and treatment, which often results in a discontinuation of treatment. Read more about healthcare issues for indigenous people in Congo

Reducing discrimination and stigma against of HIV positive people in claiming their rights

AZUR Development in collaboration with AVEC, a local organization, organized a workshop on reducing stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV in Nkayi on 30 January 2009 with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy  and Sexual Rights Initiative. This workshop comes within the framework of the activities arising from the recommendations of the regional workshop hold in May on the rights and duties of people living with HIV/AIDS. Participants agreed that people living with HIV/AIDS are not enjoying all these rights. However, stigma and discrimination remain obstacles to the prevention of HIV transmission and access to treatment for people infected with HIV, especially women and children.

Using ICTs to End Violence against Women

AZUR Development has joined the campaign, Take Back The Tech from 25 November to 10 December 2008, during the 16 days of activism to end violence against women. AZUR organized in partnership with other NGOs, CJESS and ARIPS, a workshop on violence against women in Pointe-Noire on November 25, and radio broadcasts on the issue. Read this article on how AZUR is using ICTs to end gender violence in Congo!

 Sustainable Development: launch of the youth project on the Earth Charter Pointe-noire

This project aims to strengthening Youth activism on sustainable development using the Earth Charter as tool for change in Pointe-noire in Congo, and is implemented by AZUR Development with support from the Earth Charter Youth Initiative. The project will involve 300 young girls and boys in secondary and high school schools in Pointe-noire. These activities are conducted jointly with a local organization, the CJESS. The project also looks at an innovative way to use radio and SMS to support their activism, the most powerful media in the country, to understand their potential and impact on their rights.

Young people have started organizing discussions and exchanges on the Earth Charter ethical principles and themes in secondary and high schools in the area. These discussions cover issues such as ecological integrity, social justice and economy, democracy, peace and non violence. The project will support the best ideas that will emerge from the discussions on the Earth Charter principles and themes in the schools to enable youth to be agents of changes in their communities.

AZUR Development opens office in Sibiti

During the field mission from 02 to 05 February 2009 at Sibiti in the department of Lekoumou, the Executive Director of AZUR Development, Sylvie Niombo, announced to the media the opening of AZUR office in Sibiti to support and extend the actions initiated with indigenous women and their families.
Fight against malaria: civil society and professionals are mobilizing

A media campaign on Malaria is currently held in 9 countries in Francophone Africa: Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Mali, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Cameroon and Benin. The project is implemented by AZUR Development and the Réseau Sida Afrique.

The project seeks to strengthen the advocacy efforts of 10 member organizations of network in the fight against malaria and to create a partnership between the media and these organizations to inform stakeholders about state of the fight against malaria in the 9 African countries. A training module on developing ant-malaria strategies for civil society organizations was developed and 68 members of the Réseau Sida Afrique network have received on line training during 2008 and participated in on line discussions on the disease. Mapping or situation analysis of  malaria  have been done for the 9 targeted countries, reports and and drafts can be found on this blog http://malariaafrica.wordpress.com/
The Réseau Sida Afrique also maintains a web page on malaria with several resources.
Environmental protection: indigenous involved
 
AZUR Development in partnership with ACIP has started a project to educate on environment preservation and creation of alternative income-generating activities for 14 indigenous families in Lekoumou. This project led to sessions for environmental education and learning of the making of soaps by indigenous women and the acquisition of farming tools to promote alternative income-generating activities outside of the forest. This project was funded by The Rainforest information centre (RIC).

Digital Stories and Web 2.0 for advocacy for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS in Congo

Our project aims to create an online observatory on the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS in Congo. We train communication officers of AIDS and HIV positive organizations in digital storytelling, podcasting and the creation of blogs to document the stigma and discrimination of people infected and affected by HIV / AIDS in Congo for use as a tool for advocacy and education for the promotion and defense of the rights of people infected with HIV. We have also provided them with digital cameras. Each communication officers is committed to writing blog posts that describes how the AIDS pandemic is currently affecting the local community where he or she lives and what is the daily life of people living with HIV/AIDS in the country. The project is planning to expand this year to increase traffic on its blog http://aidsrightscongo.org/and involve more young people. This project is funded by Rising Voices/
Read more about this project’s activities:

AIDS Rights Congo: promoting the rights of HIV positive

AIDS Rights Congo: stories of stigma and hope

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