CAI International

South America

International Community of Women Andean Region

Women account for nearly 30% of adults living with HIV in Latin America.[1] However, major barrier to helping these women access services is simply identifying and reaching them. Many of these women may not know they are infected, while those who do may not readily reveal their HIV status, and may lack basic information about treatment.

To address these issues, CAI in partnership with the International Community of Women (ICW), Organismo Andino de Salud, and Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and funded by United Nations Program on AIDS (UNAIDS), started the Andean Women’s Leadership Development Demonstration Project.

CAI developed a training and capacity building program to teach HIV-positive women skills and strategies to reach out to other women in their communities in order to increase the number of HIV-affected women—and their families—who are receiving services. The women who have been trained in this program have demonstrated strong commitment to educating and assisting other PWHAs on HIV prevention, care and treatment. Mobilizing a cadre of women who then develop skills and self-efficacy is a powerful model for creating a strong local advocacy movement among HIV-infected women, as well as for providing poor women with potentially marketable skills.

The overall goal of this project is to:

Mobilize HIV-positive women in five Latin American countries to become effective advocates for improving services, supports and circumstances for women living with HIV and AIDS.

Identify newly diagnosed HIV + women and women newly on treatment and navigate them to care services through advocacy, navigation and documentation.

To help local agencies build capacity in implementing a peer mentoring program

The ICW training program consisted of 3 five-day sessions over an 18-month period. Twenty-five HIV positive women, five from each country (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) were recruited through ICW and their local networks to attend the training program. The Project offered HIV positive women training, technical assistance, mentoring and support to build skills for HIV-related service delivery, training replication and advocacy.

Another element key to the success of this project was working with participating agencies to help them develop in implementing and maintaining a peer mentoring program at their sites.

After the onsite training CAI offered ongoing TA to all participants via conference calls and emails. This capacity building program was a great success at the end of the project, CAI met the expected outcome to have developed two groups of skilled women: one group who would continue to act as navigators and facilitate newly diagnosed women and those newly on treatment into care services same program and a second group who would be able to train other in mentoring. As a result of the training, funders asked the ICW women to apply for additional funding to implement and strengthen the peer mentoring projects in their respective countries.

Cicatelli Associates Incorporated, 505 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1600, New York, NY 10018
phone: (212) 594-7741 / fax: (212) 629-3321
http://www.cicatelli.org

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