The International Community of Women Living with HIV Eastern Africa (ICWEA) and The International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW) – Burundi Chapter with financial support from ViiV Healthcare (Positive Action); International Community Women Living with HIV Eastern Africa is implementing a project entitled Building Self-Resilience among AGYW Living with HIV to fight Self-Stigma’ which is targeting adolescent girls and young women living with HIV because they are highly vulnerable to all forms of human rights violations (including GBV among others; have suffered the dare consequences of the HIV epidemic; and the current settings (home, community, and institutional) are not giving enough support for their survival instead promoting all forms of stigma and therefore the need for self-resilience among the affected community. This project is also informed by the recent evidence from ICWEA program intervention that demonstrate the looming and increasing self-stigma among AGYW living with HIV. This situation has been worsened by COVID-19 pandemic that has increases household poverty, gender-based violence which coupled together have reduced self-resilience among AGYW living with HIV.
The project objectives include;
- Strengthen capacity of selected AGYW living with HIV in addressing HIV related self-stigma by end of 2023;
- Create safe spaces for knowledge sharing among AGYW living with HIV through exchange of best and innovative ways to fight self-stigma by 2023;
- Build advocacy and leadership capacity of AGYW living with HIV to gain self- resilience and challenge structural barriers that cause HIV related self-stigma by end 2023;
- Collect and share information on self-stigma among AGYW living with HIV at different levels and platforms.
In Uganda, aiming at building self-resilience among 300 AGYW facing HIV self-stigma, we are working with five (5) health facilities which include Naguru Teenage Centre AHF, Joint Clinical Research Centre, Kasangatti HC IV, TASO Entebbe, TASO Mulago and two (2) partners Uganda Young Positives, Tusitukirewamu Group. In Burundi, aiming at building self-resilience among 200 AGYW facing HIV self-stigma we are working with 8 health facilities
