The project's activities are aimed at increasing awareness and knowledge about HIV/AIDS among adolescent girls and young people. This is being done through the following: providing health services through expanding and enhancing youth friendly corners in district health facilities and youth centers at community level; building capacity of district and national counterparts to deliver life skills education; supporting the enactment of relevant policies on reproductive health and education for the target group; and providing opportunities for self employment amongst adolescent girls and young people.

The project established two adolescent health corners in the project districts. It also sensitised community and religious leaders to the urgent need for adolescents to have access to HIV prevention service. The project activities include:

• comprehensive user-friendly health services to adolescents on prevention, care and management of HIV/AIDS and STIs
• behavioural change communication strategies
• capacity-building among youth organisations
• policy environment provision

HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health, Youth

This Project is part of the Southern African Youth (SAY) Initiative. SAY is a sub-regional HIV and AIDS initiative through which the United Nations Foundation (UNF), the United Nations Fund for International Partnership (UNFIP) and UNAIDS seek to support and scale up HIV and AIDS interventions among the youth of southern Africa.

SAY is comprised of nine independent projects located in eight of southern Africa's most severely affected countries, as well as a sub-regional technical support project (Telling the Story). Through the work of UN country teams, SAY aims to catalyse innovative and expanded national responses to the HIV and AIDS epidemic to meet the needs of the youth in southern Africa, especially girls, who are most vulnerable to HIV infection.

The Lesotho project objectives are to:

• improve access and quality of HIV, AIDS and reproductive health care services, information and counsellingamong adolescent girls in order to change behaviour and prevent infections and unwanted and unsafe sex
• improve access to life skills training and basic education for in and out of school adolescent girls resultingin behaviour change
• protect the rights of adolescent girls and youth to access to quality education and reproductive healthservices during and after their pregnancy as well as means of poverty reduction through policy and legislativereforms