Why not listen to women?

People with HIV learning from women in Bolivia

In 2007 I was lucky enough to receive the World YWCA Women Leading Change Award. The award
had a 10.000 USD support for my organization, this is the Bolivian Network of People Living with
HIV/AIDS (REDBOL).

Once the money was received in Bolivia, we agreed with the women, that the most urgent topic
was to train all women on issues of Leadership and Political Incidence. Given the fact that Bolivia
still has a concentrated epidemic, the leadership of women is not easily shown, nor the HIV
epidemiology acknowledges the rapid growing numbers among women.

The workshop was conducted by women living with HIV, we designed a special training book with
simple images and few words, the title of it was “En nuestros zapatos, nuestras manos y nuestros
corazones” (On our shoes, our hands and hearts). These words came from a Needs Assessment
made by the women living with HIV in 2008, using body mapping techniques.

One of the most important leanings of the training is that another workshop was happening on
the same hotel, it was focused on prevention of mother to child transmission, it was organized by
one of the PLHA groups that is a REDBOL member but under the leadership of men. They never
invited the women; instead they flew two men as speakers. Only when they realized the
workshops were happening on the same hotel, they invited the National Chair or REDBOL (myself,
a woman living openly with HIV) as a guest speaker.

I accepted the invitation but instead of making a power point presentation I took the 35 women
with women down the stairs and asked 3 of them to talk. One was pregnant of twins, one had a
child living with HIV and one was just recently pregnant. I told the audience that the women know
exactly what they need, that our programs would be much more effective if we only LISTEN to
them.

Finally, the experience of the women’s workshop with the YWCA award will be used as a model for
transgendered people, straight and gay men, and young people living with HIV, all of us, members
of REDBOL.

At the end, all of REDBOL members moved from feeling envy for the women’s award to
recognizing how much wisdom and knowledge women have.

Gracia Violeta Ross

graciavioleta@gmail.com

This article was published in

http://www.worldywca.org/en/YWCA-News/World-YWCA-and-Member-Associations
-News/From-little-things-big-things-grow

Common Concern Magazine

http://www.worldywca.org/en/Resources/Common-Concern/June-2010-Comprehen

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