More than half of Malawi's population is under the age of 15, and ensuring that the next generation remains HIV-negative is critical to the country's future. Our Malawi Staff created a dynamic, youth-centered HIV-prevention program in which Community Caregivers lead workshops for children and teens that stress the importance of HIV-prevention. The workshops encourage youth to share the life-saving information they gain with their peers, neighbors and family members using street dramas, public debate, poetry readings, and music broadcasts, created and produced by the youth themselves. This program gives Caregivers a platform to teach youth how to protect themselves from HIV while reducing the stigma associated with the disease.

Through the youth groups that GAIA Villages promotes, orphans and at-risk youth are learning income-generating skills like farming, fishing, animal husbandry, and carpentry, skills that are sometimes being lost as more adults in Malawi's rural villages succumb to HIV/AIDS. The vocational skills that these youth learn are crucial to their livelihoods and independence ensuring that they are capable of caring for themselves and their families. Moreover, youth who learn these important skills grow up to be adults who boost their village's economic and social stability.

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