July 7th

During this session participants were asked to join the campaign to equitable access to simple diagnostics and medicine for children living with HIV and to make them affordable, comprehensive and sustainable. Hundreds of women signed postcards asking the pharmaceutical industry to address this urgently. You can also join this campaign online and help make the lives of children easier.

The plenary session is entitled “If women really matter, where is the leadership and the money?” A variety of speakers highlighted different aspect of the topic.

Mairi Bopp of the Allpart Pacific Island AIDS Foundation shared some of issues she faced living with HIV . She reminded us tat the journey for women living with HIV is not easy, especially not in poor countries. Each journey is unique but also the same. In order to address HIV, all women need to face the fact that their children might be positive and prepare themselves on how the will respond to this. She feels that for funding, advocacy and leadership, you need to be:

-         consistent

-         accountable

-         have support

Bisi Adeleye Fayemi from the African Women’s Development Fund spoke of the politics of funding. She challenges participants that if we want to defy the ills we face, we need to use our own tools primarily rather than looking outside. It is necessary to revisit the structure and architecture of the organisations we come from, totake leadership wherever we are and do what we have in front of us. She highlights the 13 Campaign, through which African women want to address the issues of the African women infected. For every ten African men infected with HIV, there are 13 African women. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 13.1m women are infected. By focusing on the number 13 the African Women’ Development Fund (AWDF) is saying that the situation can be turned around. The 13 Campaign seeks to use the number 13, to get individuals and groups to mobilise thirteen others, and also to make donations with the number 13 in mind. 

Patricia Mugambi Ndegwa from Global Business Coalition Against HIV and AIDS discussed how public private partnerships are strengthening the response, from especially women’s organisations, to HIV and AIDS and Bringing together many stakeholders for greater scale up of projects and create greater speed. She explained Co-investment is a mechanism for joint investment of private and public sector resources to provide access to information and services. The GBC encourages Business to take a wider view and realises that they can take action:

-         in the workplace (and also to spouses and families!)

-          in the community,

-         using their core competency and

-         through advocacy and leadership.

Terri McGovern from the Ford Foundation spoke about effective funding strategies. Many big organisations and foundations at present fund a lot of research and projects with little implementation outcome.  Projects with practical outcomes and grassroots effect are under-funded. Part of the reason for this lies with the way in which these organisations and especially women’s movements apply for funding. In approaching large organisations such as the Ford Foundation organisations need to consider the following:

–        Find strategic access points at country  and senior organisational level

–        Be specific about achievements of the organisation

–        Be specific about operationalising research – what will be achieved and how

–        Go further than the problems, go to fixing them!

–        Use terminology that make the real results clear.

Sono Aibe from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation spoke about the organisation’s approach to funding for women’s reproductive health issues and options as a means to address HIV. The more women can gain have control over reproductive issues, the more they can protect themselves against HIV. VCT and contraception and other reproductive health services need to be linked.

Zawdai Nyong’o from the Association of Women’s Right in Development highlights research on funding for women’s issues. She said that if we wonder why it is necessary to address and research the issues of funding, it is because we can’t do anything with-out it! It is also important to realise that money and financial flows are political issues. She provided some interesting figures from their research. Most organisations in the study are battling for existence and survival. Funding is becoming more difficult and takes more time in organisations and there is great discrepancy in funding for issues of women. A further concern is that many large funders are scaling up – giving to bigger organisations or governments– while most (95%) women’s organisations operate on budgets of less than $10 000 a year. Small to mid sized organisation struggle to find funding. This research can be found on the webpage of the Association.

Dr Musimbi Kanyoro from the World YWCA spoke about accountability and leadership as prerequisite for funding and highlighted key ways in which organisations can increase their accountability to donors and other stakeholders. Her points include:

-         Having and communicating Clarity of Purpose – what are we doing, why and how

-         Governance issues - evaluating and keeping accountable that staff and the board!

-         Human resources - Understaffed organisations makes the running of an office and projects, while also dealing with accountability and leadership issues, impossible. Just and realistic staffing levels, employment conditions and remuneration is essential for successful organisations.

-         Continued research in the field is necessary on better relationships between staff and board – it is necessary to know the extent and limits of each and to understand the distinction. The board needs to know that their role is more than monitoring and evaluating staff.

-         Financial responsibility and expertise is essential. One of the problems is that organisations have not been thinking sufficiently big in our planning. We need to think abut scale up and bigger reach

-         Show the impact of our work. “We do and we do and we do – we do not sufficiently evaluate our impact”. We might “know it in our heart” but are we evaluating it in such a way that our donors kan realise it as well

In the question and discussion time the following issues were raised:

-         Insurance for HIV positive people and especially women. Pressure on insurance agencies need to be increased to develop more innovative products.

-         The need for investment in economic empowerment for women – not just job creation and micro-financing but real involvement of women in the economy (such as collective stock market investment)

-         Who holds donors accountable? Through advocacy we to encourage donors to also put in practice principles of accountability (The Council of Foundations started such a process and these principles are available on their website.)

-         Is there a politics of faith based funding?

-         There is a need for multi-pronged approaches to access funding – smaller organisations need to join partnerships in order to access significant funding, at the same time simplified systems are required for the smaller organisations for monitoring and reporting

-         How do we involve the ‘ordinary’ man, local resource mobilization is essential as well as capacity building. The ideal situation is to be at least partly independent from the large funders, and have a consistent local base of funding.

In the workshop I had the opportunity for further discussion on the role of positive women in faith communities and the role that faith communities have in the lives of positive women. One of the key points is that stigma remains the biggest issue to address and that the church is the ideal vehicle to address this. I again had to hear the sad stories of faith communities that reject members and the pain this caused. But we also heard the stories of people that were embraced and encouraged by their faith communities and who believe that there continued health and strength is a result of this. A powerful tool used to reduce stigma in the church can be positive women themselves. In ideal situations, this can be a strong mutual strengthening relationship but in the saddest situations this can also be destructive. Although it is not always easy, positive women told how they often had to take the lead in encouraging their pastors to address HIV and in starting program in the congregation. This difficult road is only possible once a person living with HIV has got to the personal space where they have accepted their situation, worked through their emotions and self stigma issues and re able to play a role. 

In order to create a space where positive people feel more comfortable talking about their status it is necessary for congregations to be ‘loud and vocal’ in their acceptance of people living with HIV.

Some of the challenges in translating declarations to church action were discussed. These included creating an environment safe for people living with HIV and addressing church leaders who are still negative and judgemental. We reminded each other of the simplicity of Jesus Christ’s message of love and how often we are selective in what we hear of this message and even more in how we act on it.

Participants were encouraged to develop strategic alliance with regional organisation and organisations such as EHAIA and to continue to push to change attitudes and make the church a safe environment for members living with HIV.

In the Special Session: HIV & AIDS in Africa, we were honoured to listen to senior leaders from South Africa (Deputy President Ms Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka), Botswana (Minister of Health Prof Sheila Tlou); Kenia (Deputy Minister for Special Projects in the Office of the President) and Uganda (Canon Gideon Byamugisha).  

Ms Mlambo Ngcuka highlighted the importance of economic empowerment and decision making for women; youth being positive about the future and their role in preventing the spread of HIV; building a strong public health system; appreciation for home based and orphan care and care-givers and the contribution of positive women.

Prof Tlou contributed the success of programmes in Botswana in the face of very high prevalence rates to political will; good governance; low tolerance for corruption and prudence in spending.

Rev Byamugisha mentioned the concern the resurgence of HIV incidence in Uganda is rising.  He reminded us that HIV is 100 preventable; HIV is manageable; that an appropriate prevention and care package needs to be planned that is multilevel and multi-sectorial; that lawful sex is not enough but that it also needs to be safe; that SAVE provides more options than ABC; that  policies, training and mobilising of resources are equally necessary.  He warned of the dangers of politicising the issues and allowing the message to become distorted.

In discussion it was highlighted that :

-         cross border planning and programs are important

-         strong family structure are key in prevention

-         there is a strong link between prevention and care

-         addressing stigma is crucial for any success

-         knowing who is infected is key in prevention and care; VCT needs scaling up and provider initiated testing should be considered

-         poverty and economic strengthening remains key issues