Youth centres to highlight HIV/AIDS awareness

Angolans will have an extra reason to celebrate national youth day on 14 April, when young people can start using the first of three new youth centres. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and its partners, which include provincial governors and the Catholic church, will open its first centre in the eastern Moxico province on Wednesday and Benguela in the west on Friday. A centre in the central Huambo province is expected to be operational later this month. The main goal of the centres is to raise HIV/AIDS awareness among the country's youth - almost 70 percent of the population is under 24 years old - and prevent the southwest African country from suffering the same fate as many of its neighbours. Almost three decades of civil war helped curb the spread of the disease in Angola, which has a relatively low prevalence rate of around five percent of the total population, compared to an estimated 20 to 30 percent in next-door Zambia, Namibia and Botswana. "Whether HIV/AIDS increases or decreases in Angola depends on our actions, and their results with the youth," UNICEF Resident Representative, Mario Ferrari, said in a statement. "Prevention is the way forward, and in the youth we have a large percentage of Angola's population where we can trigger a process of self-protection." . Apart from a strong HIV/AIDS awareness content, the youths can also enjoy basketball, music rooms and lessons, English classes and vocational training. "Informed, innovative and industrious youth are absolutely critical to Angola's future. Prepare them now in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and we may watch as Angola reaches its real potential. Ignore them, and so much of the current developmental work here will be undone," Ferrari noted. UNICEF now has centres in almost half of Angola's 18 provinces.Around 10,000 youth are registered and a further 250,000 benefit from the outreach projects in schools, churches, and other community meeting points. Still, only a tiny fraction of the country's young population are being reached. The children's agency plans to evaluate the experience of the current centres to see if they can be expanded nationwide.