Goal: To strengthen capacities to apply context-specific, gender and culturally sensitive empowering strategies in AIDS/HIV prevention for groups at risk in different world regions.

Context and Justification: 
The Dakar Framework for Action underlines that “programmes to control and reduce the spread of the virus must make maximum use of education's potential to transmit messages on prevention and to change attitudes and behaviours”. The UNESCO strategy for HIV/AIDS preventive education stresses that “prevention is the most patent and potent response, i.e. changing behaviour by providing knowledge, fostering attitudes and conferring skills through culturally sensitive and effective communication”. The UIE project on ‘Effective AIDS/HIV  Prevention Through Empowering Educational Strategies and Gender-sensitive Materials’ (2000-2001) showed that there is an urgent need to understand the AIDS pandemic from a gender perspective and to strengthen the use of empowering learning strategies in preventin work. It is in this context that UIE explores the relevance of empowering learning strategies for effective prevention for groups at risk in three world region which are specifically affected by the epidemic (Southern and Eastern Africa, South-East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe).

In a five-days workshop/seminar  prevention practitioners, policy-makers and researchers from the three regions will share their experiences, develop an understanding of empowering learning in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention and discuss empowering learning strategies relevant for their respective field of activity. Starting from the guiding question inhowfar prevention work addresses empowering capacities, the different realities of the HIV/AIDS  pandemic in the regions will be outlined with a focus on groups especially affected by the virus and suitable responses like peer learning, group specific interventions and  self-help approaches will be discussed. 

Objectives: 

• To analyze and document successfully experiences and practices of applied empowering prevention strategies in three world regions 
• To elaborate principles of empowering learning for effective prevention 
• To strengthen and disseminate the principle that empowerment through learning is crucial for effective and successful prevention work 
• To promote prevention capacities in selected countries in three world regions 
• To enlarge and strengthen national, regional and international networks of institutions and people working in the field of empowering AIDS/HIV prevention learning 

Participants: three participants/country who are active in planning and/or implementation of HIV/AIDS prevention work, representing GOs, NGOs and research institutions/universities 

Regions and Countries:
Asia: Thailand, Cambodia, China, Philippines, Indonesia
Africa: South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia
Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Romania 

Activities and methods:

Step 1: Regional reconstruction of the HIV/AIDS situation; sharing of experiences through project presentations with relation to their empowering capacities in HIV/AIDS prevention work 
Step 2: Comparative analysis of  existing approaches with a focus on empowering potentials
Step 3: Discussion of  context specific empowering strategies; potential application in different contexts
Step 4: Planning of further activities; planning of publication and further dissemination activities 

A main element of the Workshop/Seminar consists of a series of thematic panels that provide step 2 and 3 and will be formed by participants according to common themes, approaches, target groups, intervention forms etc. The panel will analyze specific aspects of the experiences/projects present in the workshop related to the empowering character. Five to eight presenters will cover each of the themes and illustrate their respctive topic through examples from their practises. These panels also provide a focused presentation of the experiences present in the seminar. Propsed themes are "peer learning", "sexuality and culture", "religious aspects", "special groups" (MSM, prostitutes, injecting drug users etc.), "mainstreaming HIV/AIDS prevention",  "family specific interventions". One afternoon wil be devoted to a field visit to local HIV/AIDS prevention projects.

Tentative Agenda (PDF)
 

Related UIE Publications: 
Addressing Gender Relations in HIV Preventive Education
Ed.: Carolyn Medel-Añonuevo
UIE, 2002

Gender & HIV/AIDS. A Report of the International Workshop on the Development of Empowering Educational HIV/AIDS Prevention Strategies and Gender Sensitive Materials (Nairobi Kenya, 9-13 July 2001) 
Ed.: Nigel Hall, Werner Mauch 
UIE/SAfAIDS 2002
 

Contact: Werner Mauch and Carolyn Medel-Añonuevo