AIDS Competence
Our discovery started with AIDS
Our discovery of human capacity started with AIDS. For two decades, large scale progress on AIDS was limited to Northern Thailand, Uganda and Brazil. These three settings have one characteristic in common: people took ownership of the issue and of the response to HIV and AIDS. Because they have acknowledged that AIDS was an issue of concern to their own lives they acted locally to reduce its impact. These communities are AIDS Competent.
What is AIDS Competence?
In an AIDS Competent community people
- acknowledge that HIV concerns everyone
- mobilize their own capacities to reduce vulnerabilities and risks
- allow everyone to live out their full potential, and
- learn from their experience and share it with others
Every community has the capacity to become AIDS Competent. But sometimes it struggles to do so. Facilitation teams can then stimulate and support it using the AIDS Competence Process.
AIDS Competence Process
We call SALT our mode of interaction with communities: Stimulate, Appreciate, Learn, and Transfer.
At every step of the process, a facilitation team supports the community with an appreciative way-of-working and a set of tools. This is represented in the diagram below. Click on the step to know more about it.
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Where does AIDS Competence spread?
"This is a very crucial process. The fact that it drives me from 'Am I able?' to 'I AM able', from 'Can we manage?' to 'we CAN manage'. It puts me at the action. It makes me think about what to do about my situation. Samuel Kibanga, from network of PLHIV, Uganda |