Action Family Network (AFN) – Nigeria

AFN has different programmes that are aimed at bringing assistance to people. The organisation also has activities that focus on the family both as a nurturing base and as a caring home

The programmes and activities of the AFN are structured into three areas of family life. These are Family Life and Marriage Issues, Family Health & Nutrition and Family Economy. Programmes include the following:

• Abstinence/Fidelity Education programmes including "True Love Cares (TLC)" Clubs in schools teaching character formation, chaste lifestyle and academic excellence. Presentations are made to community groups, town unions and religious parishes.
• Youth Clinic with Adolescent Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS information and counseling services.
• Pre-marriage preparation, family life counseling services to couples, as well as family therapy sessions.
• Natural Family Planning (NFP) courses are conducted for couples and groups such as church parishes and other organised groups.
• Crisis Pregnancy Management: AFN promotes the "culture of life through practical charity." For teenaged girls who become pregnant outside of wedlock, the organisation provides accommodation, ante-natal care and maternity services free of charge in affiliate hospitals. The babies are thereafter taken by the grand parents or put forward for adoption in rare cases.
• HIV/AIDS: In the area of preventing and controlling sexually transmitted diseases, and especially HIV/AIDS, AFN pursues advocacy and intervention activities with the family at the centre. Efforts are made to empower families with culturally-sensitive preventive information and behaviour change models. For those already infected or affected by the epidemic, AFN activities aim to motivate and equip the family with necessary capabilities to cope with challenges. Counseling, advocacy campaigns, care and support including home-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHAs) and people affected by HIV/AIDS (PABAs). Anti-stigmatisation awareness interventions with families, religious groups and community formations are also conducted.
• Nutrition Education/Domestic Food Security: Food care practices, Exclusive Breastfeeding, Immunisation outreach for children, Child survival education as well as motherhood welfare information and care services.
• Domestic healthcare education, accident prevention and first aid care for both adults and children. The School Health Programme is an extension of the philosophy that adequate nutrition is critical to the physical, mental and intellectual well-being of the child and the family.
• Micro credits schemes are set up for the rural poor families and groups to alleviate poverty through self-employment, petty trading activities and other income-generating initiatives.
• Widowhood support especially for AIDS-widows and marginalised groups.
• Skills Acquisition for women and youths including vocational training, basic information and communication (ICT) education, dressmaking, apprenticeship programmes. Entrepreneurial training for school drop-outs is also provided.

Development Issues
Health, HIV/AIDS, Women, Youth

"We pray and labour to build first among ourselves truly Christian homes with extensions to others to assist them form and live authentic family lives in accord with the true Christian traditions concerning marriage and the family."

Some of the aims and objectives of the organisation include:

• To articulate and implement programmes that promote authentic marriage and family values, uphold the rights, dignity and responsibilities of the family.
• To work to rectify any and all policies or practices (traditional, contemporary or circumstantial) which may be harmful to the individual dignity, family life or the well being of the society.
• To defend and promote the sanctity and inviolability of human life from conception to natural demise.
• To provide vocational training centres (VTCs), and to promote job creation projects that enhance personal and domestic prosperity such as Micro-credits services and small enterprise initiatives to alleviate poverty.

Partners
Abstinence Clearinghouse, Sioux Falls – USA, State HIV/AIDS Control Agency (SACA)