WUNRN
HIV/AIDS
- Central America & Africa: Grassroots Women's Peer Exchange
By:
Shannon Hayes
August, 04,
2008
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Group meeting during the
Exchange |
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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
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