Youth and HIV/AIDS Prevention
To address the interlocked and self-perpetuating conditions of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and HIV/AIDS- related social devastation, we have developed three overlapping programs for the community youth:
• The Treasure Life Center (TLC)
• The Motivation and Personal Development Skills Program (MPDSP)
• The All Star Academy Outreach Training Groups 
Every day, an average of 150 young people utilize the sports and recreation services at the Treasure Life Center, while each quarter 1,098 in-school youths are sensitized to HIV /AIDS, substance abuse and children's rights.
Picture (right): The All Stars Football Team
The Treasure Life Center
Located in the heart of this low-resource community and managed by trained peer educators, TLC offers free health services, peer-to-peer counseling, behaviour change workshops, entrepreneurship skills training and dance and drama facilities for people in Kamwokya II parish and the surrounding areas.
When peer educators are strategically positioned at community levels to provide exact and appropriate information about HIV / AIDS / STD prevention and treatment and to act as effective positive peer support it has been proven that it they counter various negative peer influences. They are also particularly able to identify young people in distress, referring them to TLC and other KCCC services.
Picture (below): Peer Trainers at the All Star Academy
Motivation and Personal Development Skills Program (MPDSP)
The MPDSP, our fundamental strategy, is premised on the belief that individuals have assets, endowments and capacities that are often unrecognized, untapped or denied. However, if called forth, these qualities can be harnessed to unvail opportunities and overcome challenges in the environment. Our program therefore seeks to facilitate individuals to identify and build upon existing assets while developing new skills to encourage those talents to blossom.
In 1998, after more than five years of iHIV/AIDS behaviour change and counselling programs among the youth n Kamwokya II Parish and the surrounding villages, KCCC observed that while these programs were increasing knowledge about AIDS and building skills among the target audience, the knowledge and skills acquired did not necessarily translate into the positive and consistent action as anticipated.
This made KCCC start to ask the question; Why do youth continue to engage in risky sexual behaviour even when they know they can get HIV/AIDS? 
This question has no easy answers! However, when such a question was put to youth in a workshop, it elicited responses such as 'for pleasure', 'for money', 'to prove woman/manhood', 'for procreation', 'peer pressure made me do it', ' to find out why sexual issues are such a taboo in my culture', 'to show and protect love', 'to gain experience', 'it's natural' et. al. These were genuine answers but did not tell the whole story of why someone whould take such a risk on a life and death issue.
Alternatively, many of the youth in this category did not perceive life as belonging to them. From their vantage point, issues of life were not personal and not within their sphere of concern and influence. Sadly, this outlook on life determined how these individuals understood and internalised life skills. As one youth retorted ' What is Life for me, a poor and orphaned girl. Life has no meaning for me, then how do I begin thinking of life skills' .
We concluded that for preventative programs to be effective, they needed to move from being prescriptive to being diagnostic: no matter how many programs tried to encourage individuals to change their behaviour and attitudes, without a change in perceptions in the individual, no lasting change was possible.
Out of this process of reflection our structured Motivation and Personal Development Skills Program (MPDSP) emerged.
Picture (below): The Treasure Life Youth Center Netball Team
The overall goal of the MPDSP is to facilitate individuals to "open their gates'"of change in order to achieve their dreams and ambitions and avoid behaviour that exposes them to risks of acquiring HIV / AIDS and STDs.
It is of fundamental important for the peer educator to familiarise him/herself with the key issues and concerns that impact youth and adolescent development today. This understanding enables the educator to create conditions that allow the sharing of experiences which in turn permit the target group to better understand and appreciate themselves and their environment.
In these modules, individuals tell the unique story of their backgrounds and environment and how their life experiences have shaped their outlook and behaviour. These are interwoven with lectures, brainstorming, personal reflection and group discussion.
HIV/AIDS/STD prevention and transmission as well as cultural/traditional practices that relate to the spread of HIV, skills in care and support for People Living With AIDS (PLWAs), Gender and Reproductive Physiology, General Health Guidelines and Substance Abuse form the core of our curriculum.
The All Star Football Academy 
Because the overwhelming majority of the 6 to 17 years olds who come to our Football training programs are from the severely low-resourced areas around Kampala, the All Star Academy aims to go beyond simply providing an outlet for young people's physical energies and the teaching of football skills to development of a well rounded person or individual.
Our instructors and peer educators are specifically trained to sensitize the youths to their rights especially concerning child abuse of all kinds. This awareness program extends to addressing the stigma attached to children of HIV/AIDS parents. Our activities range from capacity building for coaches and peer educators, community sensitization programs and parent seminars.
The academy reaches out to young people in at least 15 primary schools every month at an average of 60 youngsters per visit. Over the weekends the Academy holds soccer clinics for youngsters from within the community. During the term holidays we offer other out-reach football clinics. We typically see over 900 youngsters per month and a minimum of 10,000 youngsters annually.
Through the development of talents, young stars have been given scholarships in various schools to access free education. Over 33 children have obtained scholarships under this arrangment.