Tag Archives: grassroots women

Violet Shivutse to Represent Grassroots Caregivers on Global Coalition on Women and AIDS Steering Committee

28 Tuesday Jun 2011

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Violet Shivutse

Congratulations to Violet Shivutse of GROOTS Kenya and the Kenya Home-Based Care Alliance for her nomination by the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA) to represent the Huairou Commission on GCWA’s Steering Committee!  The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS is a worldwide alliance of civil society groups, networks of women living with HIV, women’s organizations, AIDS service organizations, and the United Nations system committed to strengthening AIDS programming for women and girls.

The nomination of Violet, the first and only grassroots home based caregiver to sit on the GCWA Steering Committee, is a significant accomplishment. It also marks a great opportunity for grassroots women to directly influence the women’s movement and increases access to global policy spaces. We congratulate GCWA for taking this important step in recognizing the importance of grassroots caregivers in the global AIDS response.

Violet’s aim on the GCWA Steering Committee is to ensure the voices and priorities of grassroots women responding to HIV in poor urban and rural communities across Africa are represented on the Steering Committee. She will also be able to influence the agenda, priorities and programs of the GCWA to reflect grassroots women’s realities. Through her, the voices of many grassroots women, providing home-based care to people living with HIV/AIDS will directly reach the global level.

Violet is a global leader whose leadership is deeply rooted in her own community. She is the founder and director of Shibuye Community Health Workers and a focal point leader in GROOTS Kenya. She is also a founder and leader in the Kenya Home-Based Care Alliance and one of the innovators of the Watch Dog Group, a partnership and accountability tool which is stopping and redressing land grabbing from widows and orphans across Kenya. In the Huairou Commission, she skillfully bridges her grassroots experience to global level policies and processes throughout many activities and events. We are excited for the opportunity she has been given to provide her expertise to the GCWA!

Raising the Volume on Unheard AIDS Fighters in Ethiopia and Kenya

10 Monday Jan 2011

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In anticipation of Ethiopia’s Home Based Care Alliance launch, Jael Amati of GROOTS Kenya traveled to Hawassa to provide mentorship and insight to Ethiopian counterpart care providers from OSSA, Medan Acts Hawassa and Mary Joy- member organizations of SHAFON. To ensure new Alliances find their footing and are well supported, a representative from one of GROOTS International’s mature Alliances will conduct a peer exchange visit to minimize challenges faced during those crucial formative stages. The exchange in Ethiopia discussed several survival strategies to ensure the movements longevity:

  • Build positive relationships with local and like minded organizations rather than individual officials
  • Formalize relationships through written agreements
  • Standardize
  • Document! Document! Document!
  • Map out strategic partnerships and maintain realistic expectations and open communication between Alliance leaders and community leaders
  • Guide caregivers into valuing the service they provide rather than monetary gains that might result
  • It is important to utilize one another to better transfer knowledge efficiently, effectively, and accurately.
  • Retired care givers are valuable contributors to the Alliance process and should be called on to ensure their rich knowledge carries forward
  • Cross border experience sharing is key and doing so will ensure quality control, joint problem solving, and a more structured scaling up the Alliance.

Read Jael Amati Hawassa, Ethiopia HBCAlliance Visit Full Report.

The Care Economy-Not just “the business of women”

09 Tuesday Nov 2010

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“To support means that you give 100% love to that person. It is showing love to someone in need, if you have nothing to give, you are there for that person, you council and support people that feel rejected and are lonely.”
-People’s Process on Housing and Poverty, Zambia

On the 9th and 10th of November, the UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development is hosting an international conference in London, UK, focusing on “HIV Care and Support: A Roadmap to Universal Access by 2015.” The goal of the conference is to shine highlight the critical role that caregivers play in achieving Universal Access of services and treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS, and to come away with a roadmap that principal stakeholders can use to lead synergistic and comprehensive actions in their care and support work while recognizing the vital work communities have undertaken to meet this goal. Conference participants will include caregivers, NGOs, representatives of networks of PLWHA, national governments and representatives from agencies including the UK Department for International Development (DFID) the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Health Organization, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to name a few.
In preparation for the conference the Huairou Commission asked organizations working directly with grassroots home-based caregivers in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa to lead focus groups in order to guarantee that home-based caregivers voices, perspectives and priorities are at the forefront of creating effective and truly participatory policies. The conference will be a test of the ability of communities, multi-laterals, bilateral donors, national governments and NGOs to ally and react in order to address local issues, in particular, appraising and embracing the contributions made by grassroots women and girls.

Home-based care providers from West, East and Southern Africa participated in focus group discussions that were conducted between the 11th – 22nd of October, a testament to their organizing skills and ability to rapidly organize and document their findings. The results of the focus groups will be presented at the conference by a delegation of Huairou Commission members: Shorai Chitongo (grassroots caregiver/Ray of Hope/GROOTS Zimbabwe), Osenaut Jimoh (Grassroots caregiver/IWCC Nigeria), Angela Make (Regional Coordinator/Hospice and Palliative Care Association of South Africa), Frances Odong (Program Coordinator/UCOBAC); Violet Shivutse (grassroots caregiver/GROOTS Kenya/lead contributor on the Conference’s Technical Advisory group). Regrettably, and despite their standing as accomplished grassroots leaders of organizations who have travelled world -wide, our representatives from M, SA, and Z were denied visas without explanation by UK embassies in their country, disenfranchising them from representing their groups’ experiences and priorities — and significantly marginalizing the grassroots perspective–in this important consultation.

The focus group outcomes speak to caregivers central role in ensuring that communities severely paralyzed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic continue to be assisted with basic needs, psychosocial support and access to crucial health and healing information and services. 314 people participated in these discussions and while it was evident that care and support continues to be viewed as “women’s work”, men are slowly joining the movement. Caregivers were described as providing physical assistance to their clients by washing, fetching water, and preparing food and spiritual comfort through fellowship. Caregivers provide skills building combined with financial assistance through merry-go round savings and loans to encourage independence. Caregivers were viewed as positive influences and resources in the community as they supply a rich knowledge bank of tools to promote nutritious living-such as kitchen gardens, where to locate life saving ARVs, how to access organizations providing specific services, and significantly caregivers work to de-stigmatize HIV/AIDS and advocate for early testing to safeguard a sustained, healthy life. While the international arena is finally listening to these caregivers voices, there remain significant challenges ahead. The delegation of caregivers attending this conference have outlined nuanced recommendations for more cooperative partnerships moving forward: active involvement of caregivers and targeted beneficiaries in program planning and implementation, ensuring WHO and PEPFAR are carrying out M&E in coordination with caregivers, putting in place mechanisms for sustainability, ensuring that any and all programs being considered should compliment and strengthen not compete with on-going interventions, programming must be multifaceted taking into account food security, gender based violence, women’s access and ownership to land and property, and the recognition that caregivers are the very heart of care and support delivery and should therefore be acknowledge as part of the formal workforce and compensated accordingly.

In addition to this grassroots consultation, the Caregivers Action Network (which is facilitated by Huairou Commission, VSO International, HelpAge and Cordaid) convened a pre-meeting of caregivers and NGOs working on care and support in communities on November 8th. The purpose of the pre-meeting was to create a unified agenda to bring into the high level conference.

For more information, contact shannon.hayes@huairou.org