53rd Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)

On March 5, 2009, the 53rd Commission on the Status of Women convened in New York.  Home-based caregivers from community-based organizations in 10 countries called for 40 percent of HIV/AIDS funds to target investments in community-led initiatives by 2011, including home-based care which majority of the time is delivered by the poorest of the poor.

This international alliance of home-based caregivers and their partners are calling for Member States to:

• Recognize, affirm and support community caregivers by including them as decision-makers in design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of resources and programmes.
• Increase the quality of accessible funding for caregiving and earmark a minimum percentage of direct funding support for community-led responses to AIDS, particularly those driven by women.
• Strengthen and expand public health care services and human resources for health by increasing international and national funding, in a continuum of care that supports women and girls providing care services in their households and communities in the context of HIV/AIDS.
• Protect and promote women’s land and inheritance rights.
• Reduce household poverty and the cost of care through government provision of basic services and social protection measures, as well as building the capacity of community-based organizations to develop livelihoods initiatives for care.

This year’s CSW was focused on “The Equal Sharing of Responsibility between Women and Men, including Caregiving in the Context of HIV/AIDS”. Within this context, home-based caregivers and their partners in the Caregivers Action caucus have been reframing the issue. The equal sharing of responsibility, particularly in terms of care, is an important topic, but it will take a long-term  process to change attitudes and behaviors. But first, local and national governments, donors and development agencies must value, scale up and invest in what women are already doing.

You can find the full report below.

CSW Report 2009

YWCA International Women’s Summit

From July 4-8, 2007, the YWCA convened the first conference focusing specifically on Women and AIDS.

The four-day Grassroots Academy showcased the strategies, successes, challenges and leadership of grassroots women. A particular focus was put on what grassroots women have been able to accomplish from their own initiative, without outside support from donors. This practice-sharing led to concrete follow up plans being laid, including for peer exchanges and expansion of the Home-Based Care Alliance. The  Compensation for Contributions Campaign was also launched at the Academy, in which grassroots home-based caregivers began to count and monetize their contributions to the AIDS response.

Some of the goals members of GROOTS International identified for this Grassroots Academy were:

• To identify innovative new groups and practices.
• To expose and orient new groups to our members, networks, innovations and Campaigns.
• To stimulate cooperative opportunities for on-going collaboration, networking, peer learning and advocacy.
• To ensure full participation and energy, strong sharing and learning experiences.
• To emerge from the Academy with strong messages to bring into the YWCA Summit and beyond.

Read the Full Report Below.

YWCA Report 2007

IAC- Mexico City

The theme at this year’s International AIDS Conference was Universal Action Now. The purpose of the conference was to synthesize different AIDS responses from public health sector prevention and treatment initiatives to community-based organizing.

The conference was separated into three different tracks:

• Scientific
• Community
• Leadership

The International AIDS Society wishes to meld initiatives in scientific-based treatment and prevention with the needs of communities. They see leadership as a broad term, encompassing grassroots leaders, as well as high-profile and elected officials.

The Peer Exchange and Conference program focus on positioning the African leaders of our Campaign as experts and opening venues for them to share their concrete strategies, knowledge and approaches to HIV and AIDS through two mechanisms:

• Through an exchange with their peers in Latin American working in indigenous communities in Guatemala and Honduras who have developed their own expertise on community development (particularly in the areas of resilience building).
• Through the International AIDS Conference itself. The Conference will also be a venue for our Latin American members to identify other community-based actors and supportive partners to launch their own organizing platforms in response to HIV and AIDS.

For more information visit: www.aids2008.org

Access the full report below.

IAC Report- Mexico City

Grassroots International Academy

The Grassroots Women’s International Academy was the 12^th Grassroots Women’s International Academy held globally, and the third held regionally in Africa. The Academy focused on grassroots women’s responses to HIV and AIDS. The Academy, hosted by GROOTS Kenya was held in Nairobi from June 29^th to July 3^rd 2007.

The Grassroots Academy was attended by 90 women from 34 organizations in 16 countries (Eastern, Western, Southern Africa, India and Guatemala), working in tens of thousand communities. More than half were grassroots women from self-help groups representing significant constituencies, and most of the rest were NGO staff supporters of grassroots women’s groups and 3 were local government representatives. A special effort was made to include non-African members of GROOTS and the Huairou Commission, in order to bring a global perspective to the AIDS Campaign, and to share the lessons learned and good strategies developed by grassroots women in Africa over the past 20 years of coping with HIV and AIDs with organized groups of grassroots women from outside of Africa.

The goals of this Academy were:

• To identify innovative new groups and practices.
• To expose and orient new groups to our members, networks, innovations and Campaigns.
• To stimulate cooperative opportunities for ongoing collaboration, networking, peer learning and advocacy.
• To emerge from the Academy with strong messages to bring to the international community.

The Academy program included activities and time for grassroots participants to analyze their contributions in responding to HIV and AIDS see and appreciate their own capacities; analyze their situations and survival strategies; organize themselves for impact, internally and externally, and partner on a proactive agenda.

Finally, the Grassroots Academy closed with a Partner’s Dialogue. Grassroots women spoke about who they are and the important work they do, and called on the partners to put resources into the hands of grassroots women and to use their positions and connections to advocate for changes in the way that resources are distributed. In these presentations they demonstrated how much they had learned from each other and the common agenda they had been able to forge over 4 days, despite their different nationalities, languages and contexts.

The NGO partners in the Academy shared their experiences participating in the Grassroots Academy and the effect of being exposed to successful grassroots organizing initiatives. Grassroots groups were also joined by representatives of institutions committed to partnering with grassroots women’s organizations and networks. The partners shared their funding philosophies, opportunities, contacts, and committed themselves to linking us into the international Women’s Summit, and beyond.