WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

http://www.huairou.org/knowledge/News/08-04-grassroots-peerexchange.htm

HIV/AIDS - Central America & Africa: Grassroots Women's Peer Exchange

By: Shannon Hayes
August, 04, 2008

 

mappingexchange

 

 

Group meeting during the Exchange

Overcoming barriers of language and diverse culture, they came to a common understanding that, while HIV has had a much smaller impact on the Central American countries, it is still something that primarily affects women, who are not only infected in greater numbers, but who also are more greatly affected than men, as they bear the burden of caring for people infected and the orphans they leave behind.

From July 28-31, an historic peer exchange was held in Livingston on the coast of Guatemala, bringing together 26 women from Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Kenya and Uganda. The women came from diverse communities and cultures ranging from rural Mayan communities in Guatemala and Belize, Garifuna from isolated coastal communities in Honduras and from townships of Guatemala, and rural and urban Kenya and Uganda. The women and youth (girls and boys) who participated were leaders of self-help groups, networks and support groups of women living positively, home-based caregivers, nurses, leaders of women’s associations, students and promoters of AIDS awareness.

They traveled to come together, in some cases more than 30 hours, to build a common global platform around their experiences and grassroots-led responses to HIV and AIDS. The objectives participants laid out on the first day of the exchange included:
-To learn from the experiences of other countries, particularly Kenya and Uganda, as they have coped with HIV and AIDS;
-To identify concrete practices to learn from one another;
-To deepen relationships among groups, some of which have known each other for many years and some of which were new acquaintances;
-To create a strong message from grassroots women in Africa and Central America and bring that message forward into the International AIDS Conference and beyond.

After spending half of a day getting to know each other and learning more about GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission, the groups shared their personal, community-wide, national and organizational experiences with HIV and AIDS. Overcoming barriers of language and diverse culture, they came to a common understanding that, while HIV has had a much smaller impact on the Central American countries, it is still something that primarily affects women, who are not only infected in greater numbers, but who also are more greatly affected than men, as they bear the burden of caring for people infected and the orphans they leave behind. Some of the responses the groups shared include caring for people in their homes, forming support groups, tracking statistics, raising awareness and decreasing awareness through street theatre, community meetings and through schools and churches, working with hospitals and health ministries, and generally working to spread information on HIV and AIDS in their communities.

Reflecting on the country presentations, the women identified common issues such as lack of land ownership, insufficient health institutions, domestic violence, migration of men for labor and the subservient position of married women that are leaving women in a more vulnerable position to contracting HIV. The African women helped the Latin Americans, who are currently facing much lower prevalence rates, understand their vulnerabilities, how those translate into greater risk of HIV infection, and the importance of addressing those issues before HIV prevalence turns into a pandemic.

Grassroots women have taken serious leadership. This is a lesson we came here to share

One of the most striking aspects of the country presentations were the advancements the African women have been able to achieve in mitigating the effects of AIDS, breaking the silence, decreasing property grabbing, raising awareness of women’s contributions, and empowering women through collective organizing. “Grassroots women have taken serious leadership. This is a lesson we came here to share”. The benefits of organizing were echoed by the women from Honduras, who first organized in response to Hurricane Mitch, and were able in many ways to transfer those organizing skills in response to HIV and AIDS.

The organizing in both of these cases was either spurred or scaled up through mapping processes led by grassroots women themselves. Leading up to the Exchange, mapping initiatives on HIV and AIDS were supported by the Huairou Commission in Guatemala (among Mayan communities) and in Honduras. Community-based mapping was one of the key strategies that participants in the peer exchange agreed should be supported in communities where grassroots women have identified AIDS as an issue and want to begin to break the silence and empower women to directly confront their vulnerabilities through collective support.

We don’t have to wait until we have a pandemic to do something. We do not have to wait for the government to do something. We [neighborhood women] can raise the consciousness among the community of Livingston.

One such community is the Garifuna community in Livingston, where we were hosted. The issues of AIDS in this community and the impact of the peer exchange were clearly articulated during an interactive community dialogue held on the second night of the exchange. The women participating – health workers in the local government clinic and neighborhood leaders – appreciated the fact that they do not yet have an epidemic as their sisters in Africa currently face. And they saw this peer exchange as an opportunity for starting a community process to face the epidemic directly that absolutely had to be taken advantage of. As Raquel Leiva said, they learned during the peer exchange that, “we don’t have to wait until we have a pandemic to do something. We do not have to wait for the government to do something. We [neighborhood women] can raise the consciousness among the community of Livingston”.

Ingrid Gamboa, who leads the statistics department of the local health clinic and also acts as a counselor from her respected community position, continued to lay out the lessons learned during the exchange. She told her community and the guests, “This is an historic event. These African women left their families and traveled many hours to come and share with us. Livingston is proud to be hosting this exchange, and this will be memorable here. I have learned the importance of working in coordination among grassroots organizations. I want to raise here the idea of creating a network of grassroots organizations in our neighborhoods. We have to take advantage of this workshop, and we have to work together. I am calling for action, for coordination, because AIDS is a problem that will be worse if we don’t take action now.” Alice Kayongo of UCOBAC commended and encouraged the community. “You know there is a problem, and this means the process has started.” Analucy Bengochea of the Garifuna Emergency Committee of Honduras closed the community dialogue with these words of support: “this is the moment to take action. You have learned this from Africa: Organize. The first thing we have to do is organize, not only the infected, but also the affected people. We don’t want a pandemic; we need to organize.” She went on to offer to teach the isolated Garifuna community in Livingston the organizing methodologies that she has successfully used in Honduras.

The next day during a visit to the community of Livingston hosted by San Miguel Arcangel, a women’s fraternity in one of the neighborhoods, four women leaders from the community took Analucy up on her offer, asking directly for the Hondurans to come back to Livingston to teach them how to organize against HIV and AIDS. Gloria Silvia, one of the neighborhood women leaders told the group, “We are committed in this neighborhood to implement the experiences of our African sisters, to keep company with people who are sick with HIV and AIDS, to form support groups to start talking about these issues in the community.” Julia Dolmo of Nuevo Amanacer who has been working for 8 years to build support groups and break the silence told the group, “We know it is hard to get involved in this process [of working on HIV and AIDS]. Be patient. In the beginning things are very hard.” She then shared some concrete lessons, such as organizing self-help groups and beginning a mapping process, and promised to be in touch with the women when she returned home.

Another theme of the exchange was the role of youth in grassroots communities responding to AIDS. Youth participants in the exchange came from Belize and Kenya, and we were hosted by Associacion Ak’Tenamit, which primarily works to educate, empower and provide alternatives for Mayan youth in the Queqchi communities of Izabal. During dinner on the first night of the exchange, the Payosos (clowns) of Ak’Tenamit entertained the group with several lively skits on AIDS awareness, which they generally perform in villages in their local language. The youth messages that were emphasized included the need to take their youth and peer education groups seriously, rather than as a light social endeavor, and the need for women to become as involved in awareness raising as youth, acknowledging that youth cannot carry the whole burden on their own.

For the last day of the exchange, a core group of Africans, Hondurans and Guatemalans traveled to Guatemala City, where they participated in a two-hour exchange workshop with a number of NGOs working on AIDS in that city, and a dialogue with partners including UNAIDS, the Dutch Embassy and the Municipality of Guatemala City. In these workshops, the Africans focused on breaking the stereotype of Africans as only sitting idly, suffering and being torn apart by HIV/AIDS, war and poverty.

Although the time was too short, participants in the peer exchange agreed that it was a worthwhile investment of time and resources. Some of the lessons learned that were shared during the evaluation meeting on the last day included the need to realistically face the issue of HIV and AIDS in Central America, which they realized was being underestimated; the need to take responsibility for AIDS in one’s own communities (“This is our problem”); thinking about people who are infected and affected as they organize against AIDS, and the importance of innovative strategies to work with youth. Most importantly, one participant said, “Community participation is a must, and this is the beginning of a process for us.”

The Huairou Commission is following up on the peer exchange first, through participation in the International AIDS Conference, where the exchange participants will carry forth a message focusing on increasing recognition for the contributions grassroots women are making in the fight against AIDS and increasing resources for grassroots-led organizing as a vital piece of both mitigating the effects of HIV and AIDS, and stopping further spread of the virus. Secondly, we will work with our members in Honduras and the Garifuna communities of Livingston to understand how we can be of support to the local exchange and plans made during the exchange. 

Special thanks to Associacion Ak’Tenamit and Fundacion Guatemala for their excellent hosting and logistical organizing, the Open Society Institute for financial support, to the Guatemalan Ambassador in Mexico City for support in ensuring the Africans had visas, and to the participants who endured hours of complicated travel by plane, car and boat (!), language and cultural barriers in order to share their lives and stories.

Participating Organizations included:
-Nuevo Amanacer, Honduras
-El Comite Emergencia de Garifuna de Honduras
-Honduras Ministry of Health in Trujillo and Santa Fe
-Livingston Health Clinic
-Neighborhood women’s groups of Livingston
-Association of Fisherwomen, Livingston
-Julian Cho Society, Belize
-Mayan Youth Coalition, Belize
-GROOTS Kenya
-UCOBAC
-Associacion Ak’Tenamit

This Peer Exchange was made possible by generous financial support from the Open Society Institute.  For more information on this exchange, and the delegations’ participation in the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, please contact Shannon Hayes at Shannon.hayes@huairou.org 





================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.