Part of the comprehensive care necessary for OVC includes HIV/AIDS awareness and empowerment. One way OSA is successful in promoting this is through Youth HIV/AIDS Clubs, where youth are empowered to organize dramas, dances, and other mediums through which information on HIV/AIDS can be communicated.

Africa’s youth (aged 13-18) are positioned as the most capable of changing the current, clinical topography of the region due to their more immediate access to HIV/AIDS information, more time to dedicate to raising awareness, and as the link between adults and children. They also are those most at risk of contracting the disease. Prevention of HIV/AIDS in OVC and their parents becomes a crucial focus for intervention and is therefore a target objective of OSAAP. Preventative programming promotes sustained results that are low cost to the community. OSAAP seeks to arm vulnerable youth with the resilience and education necessary to make that change by encouraging preventive programming by youth themselves through every CBO. Youth plays and musicals focused on HIV awareness draw communities en masse. When focused on HIV awareness, performances sensitize audiences who would otherwise not have access.  In keeping with its non-directive philosophy, OSAAP endorses and offers training on the fine-tuning of existing HIV programs already offered by CBOs. In the event that a chosen CBO lacks a substantial youth program dealing with the HIV issue, that CBO’s initial strategy training will focus on that component.

HIV/AIDS has wiped out a generation of young adults and has orphaneda generation of children in sub-Sahara Africa. Even as the prevalence of HIV stabilizes or declines, unless we focus our continued efforts of HIV/AIDS awareness and sensitization on the next generation of young people, the communities and the OVC therein will continue to suffer. While OSA is involved directly with orphans and vulnerable children affected by AIDS, we also work with communities to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS amongst the youth to mitigate the cultural taboos surrounding the disease and to educate the community on facts and myths about the disease. To strengthen the capacity of youth to meet their own needs is to address the dilemma at its source. By focusing sustainable efforts on the next generation of these communities (the orphaned children and youth), OSA is working to curb the effect AIDS has on individuals, communities, and countries for decades to come.