In May 2023, ASUTA launched the AHADI Project in three wards of Temeke Municipal Council — Tandika, Temeke and Azimio — with a single first step: walk the streets, map the hotspots, and listen to the people the system rarely sees.
AHADI is implemented in partnership with MDM under USAID and PEPFAR funding. It targets Key Vulnerable Populations (KVPs) including sex workers and people who use substances, with a planned reach of 500 KVPs in FY23. To reach them, the team first had to find them.
Why mapping comes first
KVPs in Temeke live and work in environments shaped by stigma, discrimination and frequent police raids. They do not appear on health-facility registers. They are not represented in community meetings. The only way to design services that actually reach them is to start with field-level mapping — venue by venue, hotspot by hotspot.
ASUTA's peer educators, themselves drawn from the KVP community, led the exercise. Working in pairs across the three wards, they identified bars, guesthouses and informal hangouts where AGYW, female sex workers (FSW) and people who inject drugs (PWID) gather. Each location was geo-tagged, sized and risk-rated.
What the August numbers told us
- 91 KVPs reached in August alone — a mix of new contacts and re-engaged clients from earlier ASUTA cohorts
- Three wards covered: Tandika, Temeke and Azimio
- Sandali Dispensary identified as the closest facility partner for adolescent referrals
- Existing IGA-style groups revisited rather than re-formed — new members joined groups that already had trust
What comes next
With the map in hand, ASUTA now moves into service delivery: condom distribution, family planning, STI and GBV screening, psychosocial support, healthcare referrals and Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST). Peer educators and health-care providers will work side by side, with Sandali Dispensary as the anchor facility for clinical follow-up.
AHADI is short, but it is shaped to be deep. The community-mapping data collected this month will guide every outreach, every referral and every dialogue between ASUTA and the Municipal authorities for the rest of the year.