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" Africa is facing an incredible crisis and that crisis is called the AIDS epidemic.

It is an unprecedented crisis that requires unprecedented responses...".

By: Peter Piot - Director General, UNAIDS

Welcome to our Web site, where you can find out about our organization called AGAP (AWARENESS GROUP ON AIDS PREVENTION), a non governmental organization. This nonprofit making NGO was founded in 1997, as a result of basic research carried out by our staff in the rural areas of Kenya.

The main purpose is to sensitize and make the rural people in the East African countries totally aware of the scourge of HIV/AIDS, primarily through the innovative usage of billboards as a campaign tool.

Our research was planned to find out what would be the most effective way of ensuring not only that the rural population become aware of HIV/AIDS, but that this awareness would stay with them for a significant period of time and no just fade away after being a nine-day wonder. We used a questionnaire that included different ways of publicizing the pandemic and how people would in practice react to the different advertisements.

Our conclusion from the survey was that billboards, erected on carefully selected sites in or near large markets or trading-centers, would project the most powerful message. The graphics and inscription on each billboard would vary, depending on cultural factors and the linguistic situation in different geographic areas. The billboards would be so constructed that new graphics and different messages could be periodically inserted, during the three-years lifespan of the billboard. The aim would be to cover the major rural gathering places throughout the country as soon as possible.

We believe that this original proposal, which is aimed right down to the grassroots, will become a most potent tool in the struggle to contain HIV/AIDS, much of course depending on how many people we can reach and how quickly. Horrific recent statistics have shown how grave the predicament already is in East Africa. Whole groups of people are in real danger of being wiped out in the near future. Hundreds of thousands of families will loose their breadwinners and leave their governments with their social consequences that they will simply have no chance of handling .It is no exaggeration to say that the future of Africa is at stake and that as we write, the problem is being compounded.