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HEARD is an UNAIDS
Collaborating Centre  Latest Publications  Multi-media | HEARD's Increasing Focus on HIV in Urban Areas
Recently, the USAID funded Sexual HIV Prevention Programme (SHIPP) co-ordinated, in conjunction with HEARD, a workshop in which leading researchers, service providers and policy makers participated to review, assess and make recommendations on the current scale of provision of HIV prevention and treatment services in informal settlements in South Africa.
The workshop was a request from the national Department of Health and the outcomes of the workshop will assist in informing responses to the National Strategic Plan (NSP) for HIV & AIDS, Tuberculosis and STIs 2012-2017. Such stakeholder engagements at all levels are critical to HEARD's agenda of getting research into policy and practice. They ensure that HEARD's research work is applicable at multiple scales so that, ultimately, the impact of projects such as this go beyond 'the sum of their parts', making a tangible difference to mitigating the incidence and impact of HIV and AIDS in southern Africa.
Regionally, an estimated 28% of people living with HIV and AIDS live in 14 cities in southern and eastern Africa; approximately 15% of the global epidemic. In South Africa, 29.1% of the total estimated number of new HIV infections are found in urban informal settlements, even though only 8.7% of South Africans older than two years live in these areas. Urban informal settlements are spaces in which HIV, livelihood insecurity and gender inequalities intersect to drive acute vulnerabilities. To tackle these concurrent drivers of HIV and AIDS it is clear that interventions need to move beyond focusing on HIV risk behaviour alone.
This year, HEARD partnered with the Medical Research Council and Project Empower to develop 'The Stepping Stones and Livelihoods Strengthening Pilot Study'. Stepping Stones is a gender transformative intervention developed for Uganda in the 1990s, and since then it has been used in over 40 countries. A livelihoods intervention is currently being developed by the study team which aims to encourage young people to critically think about the barriers they face to constructing their livelihood and how they may overcome these to better build and draw on financial, human, social, physical and natural resources.
'The Stepping Stones and Livelihoods Strengthening Pilot Study' will combine the Stepping Stones and Livelihoods curricula in an integrated participatory intervention to be implemented with about 120 young people in selected eThekwini informal settlements. Its impact on participants' lives will be evaluated through both quantitative and qualitative methods. As with all HEARD projects, the project team is working towards building strong partnerships with a number of key stakeholders in order to ensure the study design and findings are relevant to them. Since our long-term goal is to upscale this intervention and ensure it can be adapted for national - and ultimately regional - application, we are working with municipal level stakeholders, but also with stakeholders at other levels.
For more information about 'The Stepping Stones and Livelihoods Strengthening Pilot Study', contact Dr Alison Misselhorn on
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 Live Feeds Dissolvable female condoms to protect against pregnancy and HIVScientists have developed a female condom which they claim can protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV by dissolving inside the body and releasing specific chemicals.
View the Article... Prevention Now (preventionnow.net)
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 Revellers Receive Female CondomsRevellers in various night clubs in Bulawayo were at the weekend issued with free condoms by the city’s commercial sex workers. Each lucky patron received an orange envelope full of male and female condoms.
View the Article... Prevention Now (preventionnow.net)
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 Case in Point: Marketing the female condomHow do you create a market for a life-saving consumer product when the population with the highest demand for it cannot afford it?
View the Article... Prevention Now (preventionnow.net)
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 Press statement by Michelle Bachelet at the 2013 African Union SummitPress Statement by Michelle Bachelet United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 26 January 2013. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 Malian women make their voices heard: emergency aid, participation in the peace process, and justice for all“Our women have been beaten, raped, whipped, forced into polygamous marriages, and who knows what else. They have lost their dignity, but what is man’s dignity without that of women?” These are the words of Sophie*, a displaced woman living in Bamako, the country’s capital, but originally from Timbuktu in... United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 UN Women adopts Paper-Smart initiative for its Executive Board sessionsIn response to the Secretary-General's call to move towards a paperless UN system and reduce the organisation's costs and carbon footprint, UN Women went Paper-Smart at its Executive Board session from 28-30 November, 2012 – and the initiative is now being replicated during the First Regular Session of the UN... United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 “Ride on! Speak Out!”: Nine countries, 15 bikers, one issue – ending violence against womenA group of motorcycle buffs joined forces with Harley-Davidson Johannesburg and UN Women in a novel initiative to raise awareness about violence against women and girls. Over 16 days, they rode 8,200 km, across Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 Economies rebound faster from crisis when responses focus on women’s needsThe need for gender-sensitive economic policies is the focus of two UN Women research papers being launched at a two-day workshop being held in New York from 21-22 January. Renowned feminist academics and policy experts will share critical perspectives on financial and economic crisis recovery. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 Enshrining Human Rights, Justice and Security in the Post-2015 Development GoalsSpeech given by John Hendra Assistant Secretary General, And Deputy Executive Director, Policy and Programme of UN Women at Wilton Park Symposium on Integrating Transitional Justice, Security and Development. 17 January 2013. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Retrieved: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 | |
