Fight AIDS in Africa:

History of Fight AIDS in Africa

Two summers ago, Justina, an alumna and pioneer of YEP, was an intern with the Association of Peace and Solidarity (APS), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Burkina Faso. She helped with a pilot program educating people in ten villages about AIDS, to help prevent the spread of AIDS in West Africa that has so devastated East and South Africa.

She was very moved by the people in Burkina Faso who were working so hard to improve the quality of life in their villages. When Justina returned to the US, she went to Dr. David Canter, Senior VP at the Pfizer Global Research and Development offices in Ann Arbor, to tell him of the APS staff’s desire to extend their AIDS education and prevention work to 30 more villages. Dr. Canter agreed to help APS achieve their goal, and in the spring of 2002, Pfizer funded APS $45,000 for two years for their AIDS education and prevention program in 30 villages.

While Justina was in Burkina Faso, Jalle, a current YEP teen, was spending her summer in Ghana where she also experienced first hand how AIDS affects the people of West Africa. Upon their return, these two young women discussed how the lack of peer education methods being used to educate youth in the AIDS prevention programs in West Africa. Both had witnessed that young people were not taking seriously the information they were being given by the adults. As a result, Justina requested seed money from Pfizer to help YEP get the project off the ground with the goal of introducing peer education methods to youth in Burkina Faso. Jalle obtained a matching grant from the National Football League Charities and the Fight AIDS in Africa project was born!

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