Paul organises HIV women

Paul trains HIV community in India

Initial ground work!

I got some success (at last!). Last few weeks I have been updating you about my endeavors to carry out the local community organizing workshops. It was a very interesting process for me and I learnt a lot from it myself. Initially I had thought to do it with my team only but later on after your detail guidance, I put effort in expanding outreach to other people.

Instead of simply reaching out to staff members of local organizations or non positive organizational staff, I also targeted a mix of HIV+ people and non HIV+ people who are interested to do something for their society. HIV+ people are very vulnerable and few of them are very depressed (some ladies tried to commit suicide with their kids). Instead of the usual training format (completing in one go), I am trying to develop them into community organizers gradually.

I have contacted the HIV+ networks and had a series of discussions in explaining the process (the network members are all HIV+). Once I was accepted by them, I requested them to extend support to me to reach out to the others and now the success is trickling down to others!

Orgainising the workshop

Firstly I had a session with the organization heads along with my team to explain what is the SEAPCP network and why we are doing this echo workshop and how local people can benefit form the training process to become community organisers. Secondly I also built up confidence with them during the pre-training rapport building. Thirdly after we had established the objectives, we selected the potential participants. This is the toughest task as not a single woman wanted to participate in the training programme as they did not want to be marked as being HIV+!

Fourthly I made the HIV care centre as the focal point through which we can collaborate to do the follow up work after the training workehops. This process can also be useful for the HIV+ network as they can be supported by the center. Next I had to explore some sort of sustainable mechanism for the entire process. I had shared about the whole organizing strategy with other institutions who had ultimately agreed to support these people.

I also observed that a good no of potential HIV+ volunteers are in dire need to go back to their homes at night and they can not afford to stay more than one day at a stretch of the workshop. They are under heavy medication and often suffer from the side effects like lethargy and vomiting so they prefer training session of 1 day at a time. So this challenged me to design the session to make it as simple as possible within a 1-day frame.

Training the people
Finally I organised a 1-day session with 15 HIV volunteers last week! It was kept simple and I facilitated them to know about themselves and each other as individuals. Then to know what it mean for them to be with family (ie their home) and then what they feel about their society (ie their surrounding).

This simple exercise opened up a flood of knowledge for the participants as well as for me and the organization’s volunteers. I got an insight into their lives, how tough it is for them and how vulnerable they are from police, local leaders and lastly from their own family members.

It was an eye opener and they felt very enthusiastic and now they are very keen to attend the next session. We have succeeded in creating a desire to learn among this very depressed group. Each participant is very poor but we made it a point that everyone had to pay INR 5 (Indian Rupees) as an entrance fee. Then the best participant would be able to take the entire collection home at the end of the training. They were highly amused and agreed with it.

”Fruits of our labor”

This is just a curtain raiser as the final training is yet to come as I am gradually increasing their interest in learning. I had given them some small tasks which will be reported at the next workshop. It seems like a slow process but I am sure of a successful outcome! Please guide me if I am wrong or if I need to change my strategy (it is for my learning also).

After the 1^st workshop, I have been approached by these women to organize a second workshop on how they could organize themselves! I have also been invited by other "Community Care Centers" to share about my strategy to develop community organizers among the HIV+ people. They are now studying my approach and plans to see if it is relevant for their work.

Meanwhile, I found there is an urgent need of CO session for the peace building in riot affected areas of urban slums of Ahmedabad. This will become my next target area to spread the spirit and strategy of community organizing.

Paul Biplab has been involved in community upliftment in drought and earthquake affected areas of Gujarat in India for last 14 years. He has been awarded "Change-maker for India, an Ambassador for Peace" by the United Nations Peace Federation as well as winner in IDM 2007 of World Bank. He was selected as one of the participants in SEAPCP Community Organising Course 2008 in Bali Indonesia and Advance course in Kuala Kumpur Malaysia in 2009, and is currently a member of the SEAPCP Community Organising Network.