There are millions of dollars being invested in responding to the AIDS pandemic. Major donors, multilateral development agencies, civil society and governments meet regularly to decide how to distribute the aid. In the end, the daily response lies on the shoulders of the communities AIDS effects.
Grassroots women have formed a community-driven response to HIV/AIDS. Through home based care, grassroots women have created a holistic, women-led approach to providing basic needs and more. These women know first hand that HIV is not just a health issue, but an issue that encompasses all aspects of daily life. It is an issue encompassing all aspects of life—access to basic services such as water, sanitation, transportation and food security are compromised. When caring for a neighbor, a caregiver can not afford to focus on just one factor. They realize that each issue is intertwined and all must be addressed equally to successfully help their neighbors.
Home-based caregivers provide a breadth of services from palliative care, treatment for opportunistic infections to nutritional counseling, psychosocial counseling and providing social support to affected family members and friends. Caregivers initiate locally appropriate and culturally sensitive stigma-reduction and awareness raising campaigns work to reduce stigma against people living with AIDS.
Caregivers Network
Caregivers are redefining the traditional roles of women. These women are not just caregivers anymore; they are community leaders and educators. They have created groups that are engaging in peer learning—becoming trainers of trainers who exchange information and skills. They are negotiating with local government authorities, accessing funds and moving into decision making positions.
Caregivers know it is important to link to formal services to improve access to basic services. The formal services that exist include—clinics and hospitals, mortuaries and feeding programs as well as bursary funds for orphans and other community development funds.
Through these negotiations they improve linkages and access to government services and other NGO and charitable organizations. The goal of the caregiver groups is to shift resources and decision-making to community responses.
The Movement
The Home Based Care Alliance is a movement of home-based caregivers organizing for recognition and self –representation, at the local, national and international levels, for the essential services, care and resources they provide their communities.
The Alliance takes on the task of advocating for transparency and accountability in HIV/AIDS programming. These women become monitors and evaluators of resources and services for the AIDS response in their communities.
The Alliance sees the power in building capacity by sharing experiences, strategies and techniques. They then take this invaluable information to the next level, providing policy-makers with relevant current data and community priorities related to HIV and AIDS.
These women do not stop at just providing information but have claimed leadership spaces, especially on the constituency level AIDS and other development committees that governments mandate to make decisions on their community priorities.
