PAMOJA AFIA HEALTH INITIATIVE
“Health Families & Health Communities”
Pamoja Afia Initiative (PAI) is a health-empowered youth movement engineering ICT to develop creativity and innovation for life skills development and job creation in areas surrounding tourist national parks.
Background
Pamoja is a Swahili word meaning “Togetherness “which motivates us to come together in addressing the problems affecting humanity. Afia is a Swahili word meaning “Health”. Pamoja Health Initiative started as a 5% profit contribution of Pamoja Tour and Travel as a corporate socio responsibility (CSR) campaign to impact vulnerable communities. As a reputable and professional Tour and Travel company carrying out numerous safaris in diverse regions of East Africa ,Mr. Mukiibi sperito the proprietor of Pamoja Tours and travel and at the same time a Health Administrator specialist came together with other professionals to form Pamoja health Initiative to focus on the work of transforming lives of youth and impacting their communities.
To date, Pamoja Health Initiate has engaged communities to raise over 500 units of blood to Uganda Blood Bank Transfusion Services to help reduce maternal mortality and organized health camps which have impacted people with HIV Counseling and Testing services, reproductive health services, cervical cancer screening, Hepatitis B testing, Malaria prevention services, among others. While rendering these services we realized that there was a low uptake of these services by the young people. Many youth did not come for services because they had stigma, lacked life skills. We therefore came up into a health initiative to fill up the health gaps among the youth especially in the area of Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights. (SRHR)