• Support us in our struggle against those who would fire us from our jobs, evict us from our homes, refuse to touch us or separate us from our loved ones, our community or our peers, since available evidence does not support the view that HIV/AIDS can be spread by casual, social contact.


• Not scapegoat people with HIV/AIDS, blame us for the epidemic or generalize about our lifestyles.

• Form caucuses to choose their own representatives, to deal with the media, to choose their own agenda and to plan their own strategies.


• Be involved at every level of decision-making and specifically serve on the boards of directors of provider organizations.


• Be included in all HIV/AIDS forums with equal credibility as other participants, to share their own experiences and knowledge.


• Substitute low-risk sexual behaviors for those which could endanger themselves or their partners; we feel people with HIV/AIDS have an ethical responsibility to inform their potential sexual partners of their health status.

• To as full and satisfying sexual and emotional lives as anyone else.



• To quality medical treatment and quality social service provision without discrimination of any form including sexual orientation, gender, diagnosis, economic status or race.



• To full explanations of all medical procedures and risks, to choose or refuse their treatment modalities, to refuse to participate in research without jeopardizing their treatment and to make informed decisions about their lives.



• To privacy, to confidentiality of medical records, to human respect and to choose who their significant others are.



• To die -- and to LIVE -- in dignity.

NAPWA’s mission statement is to provide legitimate representative and an assertive platform in consultative partnership with relevant stakeholders, whereby basic human rights, dignity and support of PWA’s can be voiced, upheld and protected within a safe and secured environment. We endeavour to achieve our mission statement by catering for individual and provincial needs as well as the diverse population of people living with HIV/AIDS.

NAPWA runs the following programmes as its approach and contribution in fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS:

• Mobilization of people who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.


• Provide care and support to people living with HIV/AIDS through counseling, referrals and home-based care


• Provide necessary information to people living with HIV/AIDS


• Empower people living with HIV/AIDS


• Lobby and advocate for the interests of people living with HIV/AIDS


• HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns i.e. public talks and information dissemination

By this NAPWA Provinces provide counseling to people that have been newly diagnosed of their HIV positive status. We also counsel people who are affected by HIV/AIDS i.e. families, friend s of people living with HIV/AIDS, those who lost their loved ones through HIV/AIDS epidemic. We also run support groups meeting nationally. In support groups meetings, people share their experiences, problems and challenges of people living with HIV/AIDS. But most importantly, people share their skills, strategies, activities and ways of living positive with HIV/AIDS.

As indicated earlier in this article, many people who are HIV positive face discrimination and stigmatization in their homes and communities. This is to a larger extent caused by misconceptions, lack of proper understanding about HIV/AIDS. People still have many wrong ideas about the origin and how and why does one get infected. All these make people to stigmatize and discriminate people living with HIV/AIDS. NAPWA as its part of the intervention strategies is running programmes that encompass disclosure (where people go out and disclose their HIV positive status, talking to members of the communities about HIV/AIDS information, and material. The objective of this campaign is to enhance the understanding of HIV/AIDS to our people. Secondly, we believe that once there is increased understanding of HIV/AIDS, communities will accept, care and support people living with HIV/AIDS. This will eventually end discrimination, and stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Through this program NAPWA is able to know the PWA's who need counselling, and other form of assistance. Mobilization of campaigns also put human face to HIV/AIDS epidemic, where people begin to see those people who are living with HIV/AIDS. We are busy with the process of building strong local NAPWA branches across the country. The objective of this is to mobilize human and financial resources locally in order to run locally based programmes.
NAPWA also raised problems and interests of people living with HIV/AIDS. We fight issues like access to treatment, home based care and support for PWA’s. We also challenge and protect PWA's against discrimination, violation of PWA’s human rights, exploitations etc.

Information sessions on Parent-to-child transmission, ethical and legal rights of PWA’s, Feeding of HIV positive infants, Opportunistic infections, TB and Multi-drug Resistance, Anti-retroviral etc will be conducted for branches and support groups. Training's on leadership skills like chairing a meeting; facilitating a workshop; report writing; public speaking, etc will also be done for branches. The democratic principles governing NPO's as stated in our constitution will be instilled on the local leaders. In-house training will also be arranged for the NAPWA members and staff when the need arise. All this is aimed at developing the organization to efficiently deliver on our mandate.

At branches we discuss and address issues of social development and begin to mainstream HIV/AIDS. Capacity needs to be built on lobbying and advocacy so that if, for instance, in a certain rural village there is no running water and there is no clinic, the local branch of NAPWA must be able to raise this with the local Government or Chief highlighting the dangers this poses to HIV infected individuals. The skill of negotiating comes into the fore. Here we are aiming at improving access to services and reduction of unfair discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS.

Women are discriminated against in many ways, especially in the social, cultural and economic spheres. For biological reasons, among others, women are often more prone to contracting HIV. Because women carry so much responsibility in households and communities, a lot depends on their well-being. More often women support the whole communities. It is for these reasons that we came up with a Gender programme that is run /facilitated by a community development facilitator. This Gender programme focuses on educating, training and empowering women living with HIV/AIDS.
NAPWA through its Community Development Facilitators (CDF's) run gender workshops in identified communities. Gender workshops target both male and female with strong focus on the Youth. The content of these workshops include, sexual rights in relationships, respect, and principles of ABC (Abstain, Be faithful and Condomise) etc.

We acknowledge the existence of other organizations that also seek to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS in our country. We do collaborate with such organizations as we realize that the struggle is too big for us only. This helps for referral purposes, as we cannot be in a position to do everything on our own. We also initiate collaboration with organizations that are not working in the HIV/AIDS field because we believe that HIV/AIDS really calls for an expanded response.

The existing material on HIV/AIDS does not address the interest of people living with HIV/AIDS. Material deals with prevention and education. As much as this is important, it is important to have material that would address care and support needs for people living with HIV/AIDS. It is envisaged that material on treatment, care and support must be developed in languages that are used in all the nine South African provinces. NAPWA posters, flyers, t-shirts, stickers, jackets, mugs, tracksuits, and banners are utilized to mobilize and profile NAPWA.

NAPWA usually runs awareness campaigns in partnership with other organizations including South African Department of Health (DOH). Our interest is to ensure that negative people remain so and positive people have access to care, treatment and support service.

NAPWA believes its members must not only be socially empowered but be economically empowered as well to balance their way of life. We therefore are in the process of establishing income-generating enterprises that will benefit not only NAPWA as an organization but its members as well at the grass-root level. Training Programmes on Business Skills Development, Entrepreneurship skills and Tendering Processes are in the pipeline. NAPWA through SANAC has begun a program of training need assessment in business skills in the rural areas and KOKSTAD is one area that we have already started with and will be followed by Namaqualand in the Northern Cape, Venda in the Limpopo Province and other rural areas in other provinces.

NAPWA SOON TO LAUNCH THEIR OWN ARVT PROGRAMME

NAPWA alongside Secure the Future are in preparations to launch a pilot Community Based Treatment Support Programme in Gauteng. The official launch will be in March 04. The pilot focus is aimed at initiating and implementing a comprehensive community-based HIV/AIDS response in the District of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, in Gauteng. The Ekurhuleni municipality has a population of 3.5 million with a HIV prevalence of 29.2% (prevalence source: antenatal survey 2001 clinic data); it also has a health infrastructure of four hospitals and a number of satellite clinics.


The Projects Objectives

AIM FOR BEST PRACTICE

The ARVT Programme to be named ‘The Lesedi Project’ is a pilot project being run to develop a best practice model which once established will provide complete care for a person living with HIV/AIDS in a resource-poor setting. Complete care would include; HIV testing and counselling, ongoing counselling plus training on positive living and taking ARV treatments, nutrition advice; general treatment of OI’s and the roll out of ARV Treatment with the monitoring of such treatment alongside. The aim for best practice is to develop a model we can implement in all districts for all provinces of South Africa.

COMMUNITY MOBILISATION

We mobilise communities through the preparation of starting ARV Treatments, after such training we further such mobilisation through their participation in the roll out of ARVs at the different levels of the projects activities, which NAPWA also believes will promote community ownership of the programme.

CAPACITY

The project will strengthen NAPWA with professionals in the field of HIV/AIDS, creating a wider support knowledge and guidance for members and service providers in the identified project sites.

HOLISTIC CARE & SUPPORT PACKAGE

The project will prepare access for members and PWAs to a service providing complete care and support for someone facing HIV/AIDS; which will also include nutrition access, community involvement, skills development and sound income generating activities that are based on economic and business principles.