EAPI Transformed to API

East Africa Population Initiative (EAPI) has attained an Institute Status, its now Called Africa Population Institute (API).
You can visit our new website at http://www.africapopulation.net/ or write to us through our emails info@africapopulation.net or admin@africapopulation.net or call us through tele contacts +256772836998 Together we can transform generations in Africa.

Population, Health and Environment (PHE) East Africa Network

The Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) East Africa Network was launched on November 16, 2007, at the Integrated Development for East Africa conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Population Reference Bureau was the lead organizer of the conference and also the facilitating organization for a coalition building workshop.
The conference brought together field practitioners, policymakers, researchers, the media, community leaders, and advocates from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and other countries around the world for presentations and discussions on population, health, and environment initiatives, and to explore strategies and opportunities for advancing population-health-environment integration in East Africa.
USAID supported a two-day workshop on coalition building, which served as a foundation for the Network.
Conference papers on Water and Sanitation:
Ethiopia: safe sanitation for humans and the envionment-human excreta, household and garden refuse. A. Terrefe and G. Edstrom. (pdf, 1.16MB)
Ethiopia: Wichi Integrated Wetland-Watershed Management Project. S. Deribe, EWNRA. (pdf, 1.36MB)
Increasing access to safe drinking water. T. Hunde, WaterAid. (pdf, 204KB)

EAPI Training Courses/ Modules offered within East Africa

East Africa Population Initiative offers a variety of courses on its capacity development program to East African Nationals and neighbouring countries of Southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia Republic. Monitoring and Evaluation course has had the greatest coverage and demand. 31o graduate students have been trained by EAPI at Makerere University Kampala Uganda(the catchment being all the other universities in the country), 167 have been trained from Kigali Rwanda, 112 from Bujumbura Burundi, 300 from Nakulu Kenya. The next M&E Training will be conducted in Moshi Tanzania towards the end of September 2008.
Some of the other courses offered in our training workshops;
-Training of Trainers course
-Project planning and management
-Project proposal writing
-Public Health and HIV/AIDS management
-Research methods and data analysis
-Guidance and counseling techniques
-Family planning and RH issues
-Documenttion and report generation
-Reviewing literature with evidence
-Specialised Statistical packages for data analysis (SPSS, STATA, SUDAN, EPINFO, EPI-DATA, EVIEWS)
-Management and leadership skills development
-Procurement and contract management
-Peace and conflict management/resolution
-Disaster preparedness and management course
-Security consciousness and preparedness
-Communication skills/ techniques
-Customer care and recruitment procedures
EAPI targets graduate students and the individuals from the local government and co-operate organizations within and around East Africa.

NGO's in Uganda

EAPI is a christian founded None Governemental Organisation that is one of its kind operating on a wider range in East Africa by reaching out to the most vulnerable groups; the elderly, women, people living with HIV/AIDS, the youth, drug adicts and the disabaled.

Imagine what happens to those in the deep in the out skirts of Bujumbura in Burundi

Sexual and Reproductive Health Education

Young children and adolescents learn about sexual matters and reproduction by observing adult behaviour, from peers and older siblings, increasingly from the media, and, in some families, from their parents. Such information, however, is typically limited, frequently erroneous and, in the case of the media, often unduly glamourized.

UNFPA has funded the development and inclusion of family life education (FLE) in school curricula in 79 countries over the past three decades, with technical assistance from UNESCO. In contrast to earlier curricula that focused on the population-development linkage, today’s curricula are more likely to add reproductive health and physiology, family planning information and training for responsible parenthood (including planning and decision- making skills), encouragement of sexual abstinence, STD/HIV prevention, and training in gender equality.

Thus, formal instruction is an important source of accurate information. Formalized curricula for sexuality education are much less common in developing countries than in developed ones, and they are typically not implemented on a national level. In many cases, the average period of school attendance is so short as to preclude this possibility. Even in countries with nearly universal secondary education, many of the most disadvantaged adolescents drop out of school prematurely. Thus, important as school-based programmes might be, they need to be supplemented by various community-based educational programmes.

There is often strong religious and political opposition to sexuality education out of fear that it will encourage sexual activity. Data indicate, however, that sexuality education does not encourage young people to engage in sex. Most studies show that education about reproductive and sexual health contributes to the postponement of sexual activity and to the use of contraception among teens who are sexually active.

Especially now, when adolescents are increasingly at risk of STDs and AIDS, it is crucial that governments, educators, parents and community leaders recognize these risks and the reality of premarital sexual activity among young people. It is imperative to work together to provide the sexuality education young people need to protect themselves. This includes, in addition to biological facts, information about dating, relation-ships, marriage and contraception. Programmes must help young people—boys and girls—recognize the merits of abstinence, develop the skills necessary to resist peer pressure and inappropriate sexual advances, and instil the confidence to negotiate the use of contraception with their partner.

Early Sexual Activity, Pregnancy and Curtailment of Education

While schooling clearly delays marriage, whether or not schooling delays sexual activity is much less clear. Most cultural norms say that girls should not be sexually active before marriage, but the fact is that, the world over, many are. The increase in school attendance in developing countries often intensifies contact between boys and girls, even where single-sex schools are the norm. These trends, together with the declining average age at menarche, mean that increasing numbers of girls are exposed to opportunity for sexual activity before marriage. Without access to sexuality education and contraceptive information and services, many girls become pregnant.
For many girls, becoming pregnant means the end of formal education. In many countries, pregnant girls are forced to drop out of school; in Kenya alone, an estimated 10,000 a year do so. Many others drop out to care for their newborns— and, if they marry, to meet the demands of their new husbands.

Education Delays Marriage, Improves Health and Lowers Fertility

In almost every setting—regardless of region, culture, or level of development—better-educated women are more likely:
To marry later, use contraception, bear fewer children and raise healthier children;
To make better decisions for themselves and their children;
To make greater economic contributions to the household.
One of the strongest statistical correlations in developing countries is between mothers’ education and infant mortality: the children of women with more years of schooling are much more likely to survive infancy. Better-educated women are also likely to have a greater say in decisions such as when and whom they marry and to use family planning to bear only the children they can provide for.