AFRODAD (African Forum and Network on Debt and Development) and MWENGO (Mwelekeo wa NGO), a reflection and development centre for NGOs in East and Southern Africa will be holding an Activist Learning Workshop on the 26th to the 30th April 2004, in Harare, Zimbabwe. This is the second workshop, the first being held successfully in March 2003. The workshop will focus on learning for activism targeted at policy activists.

Grace is a happy woman. She is about as poor as you can be, earning just £6 a month selling shoes from a tiny market stall. But in the past year she has been spared the prospect of a premature and painful death. Grace Matnanga is HIV positive, as are one in three of those around her in the streets of Malawi's capital city. But unlike them, and thanks to an act of human kindness, she is on antiretroviral drugs.

A HIV Survey amongst pregnant women attending clinics indicates the AIDS prevalence rate among the girls aged between 15 and 19 is now estimated at 4.8 per cent and the majority live in urban centres. Statistics from the third National Population and Housing census (2002) indicate that 67 per cent of the total population of 8.4 million in Rwanda is younger than 25 years. Only half of youth between 15 and 24 have both parents living; among the other half one in ten is head of a household.