Promoting gender equity and providing education around HIV and its potential impacts on the environment are critical elements of the SUCCESS Tanzania Program. Our previous initiatives have shown that individuals that have AIDS or who care for other family members sick with AIDS have less time for productive labor and are more likely to break natural resource management rules, for example by cutting wood in the Saadani National Park. During the first two years of SUCCESS, we initiated a number of activities to mitigate the impacts of HIV/AIDS on biodiversity conservation, including Yheater for Development, training of village and ward leaders, transfer of inter-generational knowledge about sound environmental management, and lesson sharing and dissemination.

In 2008, SUCCESS expanded its efforts to promote HIV/AIDS prevention through funding from the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Response. UZIKWASA, a local NGO partner, implements the communications and capacity building activities, including Theater for Development shows that focus on HIV/AIDS prevention messages that include gender and biodiversity conservation aspects in addition to strengthening the capabilities of the Ward Multi-sectoral AIDS Communities (WMACs) and Village Multi-sectoral AIDS Committees (VMACs) in the targeted area. SUCCESS focuses on supporting village and ward multi-sectoral AIDS committees and strengthen their capacity to oversee and coordinate local responses to the epidemic. This includes facilitating villagers to develop participatory HIV/AIDS action plans, and implement and monitor HIV/AIDS interventions. Our goal is that village HIV/AIDS action plans will be incorporated into the overall comprehensive district development plans. UZIKWASA also implements mechanisms for sustainable condom supply to develop a sufficient number of outlets at the grass root level.

At the end of the Project, we expect:

At least fifty percent of all beneficiaries and participants in planning and training are women
12 condom outlets established in six villages
54,000 persons reached through theater for development and other community outreach that promote HIV/AIDS prevention, environmental protection, and gender equity.
250 VMAC and WMAC members and selected village facilitators have the capacity to facilitate community participatory planning processes for HIV/AIDS and are overseeing the implementation of village and ward HIV/AIDS action plans
The capacity of VMACs, WMACs, and other local stakeholders to better address the needs related to HIV and AIDS, is strengthened in the six pilot villages as well as neighboring villages in Pangani and Bagamoyo.
Six project villages are implementing community participatory HIV/AIDS action plans that are in line with the overall national planning approach: Obstacles and Opportunities to Development (O&OD)
Assessments of behavior change conducted in six pilot villages to measure the impacts of the project activities.
Lessons learned from integrating population, health, and environment synthesized and shared locally and in the East Africa region.