Living Your Personal Passion
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together,”
Lilla Watson, Aboriginal elder, educator and activist.
A powerful Pre-Council Workshop entitled “Living Your Personal Passion” was held at the International Women’s Summit in Zurich, Switzerland. The workshop brought together 18 women leaders living with HIV and included 4/5 building-block sessions designed to build on the existing leadership and skills of participants and throw light on new modalities of advocacy and partnership. The workshop was developed by the World YWCA, in concert with members of the International Community of Women Living with HIV Global (ICW Global) and the Athena Network. The sessions were facilitated by volunteers from the World YWCA, ICW Global, AIDS Law Project and the Salamander Trust.
The one-day workshop provided a safe space for women living with HIV to share a multi-directional exchange of knowledge, life experiences and realities of health and rights. The participants had the opportunity to explore and discuss the many challenges uniquely faced by women living with HIV, including, but not limited to: stigma, HIV disclosure, lack of human rights, denial of sexual and reproductive health services and social isolation. The dialogue throughout the workshop also generated many solution orientated ideas and highlighted best practices in advocacy, including transformative leadership, working across HIV networks and women’s organisations, partnering with country bodies, making strategic contributions in planning spaces and realigning priorities on women’s organisations to be more inclusive of women living with HIV.
As part of the workshop, a Partners’ lunch focused on identification of targeted actions to expand the strategic and meaningful roles of women living with HIV in policy programmes, advocacy, programme implementation and monitoring and evaluation. The lunch also provided an opportunity to begin aligning next steps to capitalise and build on the skills and leadership development garnered by the participants in order to inform their current and future in-country leadership roles. It brought together members of the World YWCA, national YWCAs, the Women and Girls Lead from the World AIDS Campaign and UNDP Global and Country Leadership. This was a strong beginning of analysis of best practices in partnership, blossoming of new ideas and reinforcing the centrality of women living with HIV in both effective HIV responses and in strengthening broader women’s programming and services.
The workshop succeeded in providing a number of concise recommendations from women living with HIV to increase inclusion, as well as commitments from the World YWCA and UNDP to expand partnerships. Foremost, it provided a safe space for women living with HIV to learn, share and build.
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