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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts: 
Faulconer, Laura
Senior Program Officer, HIV/AIDS Twinning Center
AIHA/Washington, DC
Tel. 202.789.1136
lfaulconer@aiha.com

 
Program will train social workers and allied caregivers to improve conditions for youth affected by HIV/AIDS

WASHINGTON, DC, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, December 19, 2006—The American International Health Alliance (AIHA) has established a new partnership through its HIV/AIDS Twinning Center Program that is supporting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief by training social workers and para-professionals to provide much-needed care and support to Tanzanian children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS.

The Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center (MATEC) and the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago are partnering with Tanzania’s Institute of Social Welfare in Dar es Salaam to strengthen the Institute’s capacity to train social workers in case management, leadership, and other skills necessary to ensure comprehensive services are available to children affected by HIV/AIDS in all of the country’s 126 districts.

The partners are working together to bridge the existing lack of support for orphans and vulnerable children by developing a targeted curriculum and mentoring strategy for social work students; expanding clinical fieldwork opportunities; and creating a short-term program for training and certifying para-professionals who will provide direct care and services to children and families at the community level. Other activities include designing continuing education courses to upgrade the skills of practicing social work professionals and providing the Institute’s faculty with opportunities to expand their own knowledge and skills through professional exchanges and site visits.

Based at Jane Addams College of Social Work, MATEC provides HIV training and support services through local sites in seven midwestern states including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin. The Master of Social Work program at Jane Addams College of Social Work is one of the 10 largest programs of its kind in the United States, preparing students to work as practitioners, caseworkers, administrators, policy advocates, and community organizers in a variety of settings and with diverse populations, including children and families facing acute and chronic health problems such as HIV/AIDS.

Funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center mobilizes and coordinates the resources of US healthcare providers to effectively build capacity to reduce HIV infection rates and provide care to those infected with, or affected by, HIV/AIDS in the Emergency Plan’s 15 focus countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

For more information about this partnership, click here.

For more information on the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center, visit www.TwinningAgainstAIDS.org.

Created in 1992 by a consortium of major healthcare provider associations and professional medical education organizations, AIHA establishes and manages programs and twinning partnerships between health-related institutions in the United States and their counterparts in Africa, Asia, Eurasia, and the Caribbean.

For more information about AIHA, visit our Web site at www.aiha.com.

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