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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!

GROOTS Kenya Invited to Participate in Kenya’s Inter Agency Coordinating Committee on Health

20 Wednesday Apr 2011

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The Kenyan government has several Inter Agency Coordinating Committees (ICCs) that focus on a range of issues within Kenya’s health sector. On learning of an upcoming meeting with key leaders from the Community Health Workers ICC at the Ministry of Public Health, GROOTS Kenya moved to action for inclusion in the discussions.  For these efforts, they were granted a meeting with the leaders to help shape three items: the policy formation on Community Health Workers (CHW), the accompanying training curriculum, and the CHW manual that Committee is drafting. The organization’s agenda for the meeting was two-fold- to secure physical space within the Committee’s discussions, and to make certain that grassroots opinions were considered as the policy is finalized. The organization shared with Committee leaders the findings from several action research efforts, including the Huairou Commission’s Compensation for Contributions. As a result, the group of leaders invited GROOTS Kenya to become apart of the Committee and to more comprehensively share findings from a cross section of surveys during the Comittee’s stakeholders retreat.

Update submitted by Jael Amati of GROOTS Kenya 

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.