5) Description of health product/service offering: We are addressing gender and HIV and AIDS issues. Our primary beneficiaries are universities and communities' youths. We offer training workshops from which youths then device action plans where they get to address gender, HIV and AIDS as well as reproductive health issues discussed in the training workshops in particular groups in innovative means i.e edutainment, campaigns, big brother-big sister projects, orphan homes projects. these workshops help redefine 'toxic masculinitities' and non assertiveness attributes that render young men and women susceptible to reproductive health problems and also exposes them to STIs and HIV and AIDS. they then get to do outreach activities where they help other disadvantaged community members

6) Description of innovation: Other programs have focused on giving the disadvantaged information without allowing them to actively participate inthe projects meant to benefit them. whats unique about our program is the redefining of toxic masculinities for the males which is a novel idea for male participation in addressing gender, reproductive health and HIV and AIDS issues. the males get involved with their female counterparts as compared to other programs which have been focusing mainly on women and girls only, forgetting the males who also play a very important and influential role in the women's lives. tasking men to redefine and identify the masculinity traits which puts them at risk of infecting themselves and their partners makes them feel actively involved in changing their risky lifestyles

7) Operational model: We focus on training workshops first and then supporting action plans that the youths would have come up with. the youth action plans are always very innovative and through outreach programs they get to go to marginalised groups like orphans, farm communities, where they involve them in their planned activities and such programs usually find themselves gannering lots of support from other organisations in the same field

8) Human resources: we have a full time staff of 13 members, 10 are university graduates, 1 is a postgraduate and the other 2 are support staff i.e certified secretary and a mesenger. 9 of the members work on the health initiative and all have different social science degrees

9) Key operational partnerships: we have a number of partners i.e our funders who include the Norwegian People's Aid, Oxfam -Australia(the Combined Gender and HIV and AIDS project), HIVOS, Park Nicollete Institute and PSI-Zimbabwe. We have also partnered with the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council who provide us with necessary in formation and project guides in reproductive health, PSI -Zimbabwe, provide us with technical support and supports our Voluntary Counselling and Testing initiatives, the 8 Zimbabwean universities have provided us with offices space for our different stationed projects managers in different cities

10) Financial Sustainability

          • Fees charged to clients?: No

          • How do you assure affordability?: we usually do project proposals to different funding organisations who then fund our programs. we also workplace programs where we offer training to the corporate world and we charge for the trainings and consultancy then use the funds for our programs with the disadvantaged and marginalised communities

          • Earned incomes as a percentage of operating costs: 40

          • Other funding sources: the programs are financially self sustainable and as aforementioned we get funding from donors as well as through our corporate workplace programs

          • Strategy for long-term sustainability: we intend to intensify our workplace programs and venture more into consultancy which can help pull out funds to sustain our masculinities and assertiveness trai nings

11) Current and Future Impact

          • Total number of clients: 1 500 000

          • Clients in the past year: 400 000

          • Percentage of low-income clients: 90%

          • Impact: some of the trained and active participants have gone on to form their own organisations in their particular districts where they are furthering this move towards behaviour change to school going youths. we have also managed to foster a number of new skills in these youths including communication, leadership, assertiveness, negotiation and counselling skills

          • Overall "market": our program can benefit millionsof other youths. so far we have manage to replicate the program in the 10 provinces of Zimbabwe from 1 in 2003. Oxfam Australia in South Africa wants to do the same program with South African youths whilst the Norwegian People's Aid wants the sme program replicated in Mozambique. we are still in the negotiation phase with the Botswana university dean of students who wants us to replicate the same programme firstly at the university of botswana. in essence, the program intends to filter to 3 other sub saharan African countries and could benefit more than 9 million youths in the 4 countries intending to take on this program

12) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Scaling Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: in zimbabwe, we intend to move into tertiary and teachers colleges as well as filter into high schools if granted the permission by our government. we also intend to scale up into our mentioned neighbouring countries

13) Policy change: greater youths involvement in decision making and in the involvement of programs that concern them

14) Origin of the initiative: it started with our peer counselling trainings and with the drive to scale up our activities we moved on to do a baseline survey on youths , gender, reproductive health and HIV and AIDS in universities which was supported by the University of Zimbabwe department of population studies and the US Park Nicollete Institute. from the survey, Ms Tsitsi Masvaure then designed a proposal to HIVOS which sailed through and was supporting one community in Gweru. from then, many other proposals were sent to other organiations like HIVOS , the Canadian International Development Agency , Norwegian People's Aid and they have are funding different provinces on the same project. Ms Masvaure has since left Shape is currently pursuing her PhD studies at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Contact Information:
Mildred  Mushinga
Development Manager
SHAPE Zimbabwe Trust
(NGO)
Zimbabwe
Website: www.shapezim.org