Sharing lessons on stigma across Africa

07 November 2005

In August 2005, 20 trainers from across Southern and East Africa who have been implementing the toolkit Understanding and Challenging HIV Stigma: Toolkit for Action came together for a workshop in Livingstone, Zambia, to share lessons in rolling out the stigma training nationally.

During the workshop, participants reviewed the toolkit and developed new exercises on stigma in response to recent challenges, which will be written into a revised version of the toolkit early in 2006. Many of the issues surrounding stigma are similar across Southern and East Africa, and the sharing of experiences and ideas was valued by all.

Examples of how the stigma training has been rolled out include:

  • Carrying out community workshops for marginalised groups and a stigma training of trainers for university students on campus (Ethiopia)
  • Using stigma dramas in workshops for local musicians and artists (Botswana)
  • Running a series of intensive workshops for staff at a teaching hospital to break down the stigma surrounding a new antiretroviral therapy service (Tanzania)
  • Integrating stigma issues into training for women and children (Uganda)
  • Training home-based care supervisors on the role of volunteer carers in challenging stigma in families (Tanzania)
  • Integrating stigma awareness training into the counselling curriculum for VCT counsellors (Zambia)
  • Training peer educators in private companies to support an HIV workplace programme (Zambia).

Participants came from six different countries and 18 different non-governmental and community-based organisations and networks of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The Regional Stigma Training Project

The Regional Stigma Training Project, part of the Africa Regional Programme, is based in the Zambia country office, and trains teams of trainers around Southern and Eastern Africa on HIV stigma and discrimination using the toolkit Understanding and Challenging HIV Stigma: Toolkit for Action. The trainers then roll out the toolkit and training within their own countries.

The project began in 2004, and by July 2005 trainers from five different countries had been trained.

Next year the project will start working in West Africa – specifically Senegal and Burkina Faso.