This is a short newsletter we intend to publish on a quarterly basis during the course of the Project to keep you informed of the latest news in the Gender Development Project in Kenya and Indonesia and in the areas of gender, HIV, and women’s rights. We hope this small communications tool will help keep you up to date and stimulate questions and discussion on your part. The idea is also to create a link between this newsletter and existent communications tools. So, when your mind is pricked you can look up more information on the website and talk about the issues of interest to you with other Project participants.

As this newsletter progresses along with the Project itself we expect to adapt it considerably to suit your interests and needs. Therefore, please keep us informed at all times about what you want to
see in  this newsletter. We look forward to hearing from you.

Warm wishes,
Jennifer Bushee 
Project coordinator - Gender Development Project

As part of the M&E protocol a small research initiative to evaluate the impact of the prevention activities of counterparts has also been developed. The small research initiative seeks to evaluate the effect of the activities of counterparts. STOP AIDS NOW! wants to learn if the activities have changed the levels of knowledge of the women and girls on HIV/AIDS, and their gender-related attitudes, beliefs and perceptions. In Kenya, ten local partners are participating in the research initiative. Read more about the research initiative...

The latest news in Kenya
Project activities
Activities - The Coalition
The Coalition of participating organisations, which brings together all local partners in the Gender Development Project, has recently selected its activities to take up. This selection was made through a democratic process in which participating organisations voted for their top three activities out of a selection of five possible ones. The coalition will work on the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence. But they will integrate messaging relevant to other events such as, the STAND UP Campaign for the Millennium Development Goals, and the World Rural Women’s Day. Now, it’s in WOFAK’s hands, as coalition coordinator, to get started on organising the activities!

Visit Project Coordinator
Jennifer Bushee, the project coordinator of the Gender Development Project, travelled in July together with Ilse Flink (intern) and Hellen Otieno (WOFAK) throughout much of Kenya to meet with participating organisations. Through the very kind efforts of groups it was possible to meet with community health workers and their clients in Eldoret. It was also possible to visit a school for vulnerable children in Bondo, a documentation centre in Kakamega, and a training session for women living with HIV in Nairobi.

The participating organisations were very warm, welcoming and helpful. We all agree the visits were extremely useful for all parties. It was nice to meet face to face, assuage each other’s concerns, discuss further needs, and strengthen collaboration. It was also very important for STOP AIDS NOW! to understand better the circumstances and contexts in which the participating organisations work. It was a very positive experience on all fronts.

The latest news in Indonesia
Finalizing the proposals
The Indonesian groups have been finalizing their proposals. We have received 14 proposals for Java, and 10 for Papua. The coalition coordinators (Foker LSM Papua and Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia for Papua and Java, respectively) are in charge of reviewing them and providing recommendations to STOP AIDS NOW!. Other groups are involved in the Project by linking to the coalition and individual project activities. Therefore, it looks like the Project will actually turn out to be bigger in Indonesia than previously thought.

Visit Project Coordinator
The STOP AIDS NOW! project coordinator just returned from a long and fruitful trip in Indonesia to visit the organisations participating in the Project. Travel included visits to organisations in Jakarta, Bogor, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Boyolali and Ciberon, and cities in Papua, including Jayapura, Merauke Manokwari, Nabire, and Biak. Thanks to the local organisations, the SAN! project coordinator also had the opportunity to visit local projects and activity sites, such as clinics and youth family planning peer education sessions in Jakarta, a brothel in Biak, and a rehabilitation and counselling centre for young injection drug users in Bogor. The groups went out of their way to be as welcoming as possible and to ensure a positive exchange and learning experience. SAN! is highly grateful.

The purpose of the visits to local groups was to strengthen collaboration among STOP AIDS NOW!, the coalition coordinators and the participating organisations. The visits also provide a forum for discussion of the Project, to answer the questions of the local groups, and provide suggestions to address challenges. It also helps STOP AIDS NOW! to understand better the circumstances and contexts in which the local groups are implementing their activities.

Interesting publications, approaches and projects
Gender equality, transforming gender-based attitudes and behaviours and HIV

• African Transformative Video Profiles Kit
  “African Transformation” is a participatory tool that enables men and women to communicate together, and work on eliminating harmful gender norms and supporting positive ones. The kit contains video profiles of women, men, and couples from Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The stories feature the challenges they faced and overcame when dealing with issues ranging from traditional and cultural values and reproductive health to violence between partners, networking, and life skills.
• Epidemic of Inequality: Women's Rights and HIV/AIDS in Botswana and Swaziland
  This document reports on a study done in Botswana and Swaziland that found that four key factors contributed to women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS: Lack of control over sexual decision-making, including the decision to use a condom; the prevalence of HIV-related stigma and discrimination; gender-discriminatory beliefs (associated with sexual risk-taking); and a failure of traditional and government leadership to promote the equality, autonomy, and economic independence of women.

Advancing women’s rights

• Advancing Gender Equality - Using CEDAW and UN Security Council Resolution 1325
  This training module is a tool to build the capacity and awareness of gender equality advocates in government and civil society in the Southern Caucasus to advocate for and support the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. The Module might be interesting by analogy for human rights work focusing on women.

Violence

• Show Us the Money: Is Violence Against Women on the HIV&AIDS Funding Agenda?
  The report evaluates the funding streams, policies, and patterns of the major international agencies responding to AIDS. According to the report, while funding for HIV and AIDS programmes has increased dramatically in the past five years, none of the agencies examined had successfully integrated efforts to address violence against women into their HIV programmes.
  
• Ending violence against women: programming for prevention, protection and care
  This handbook is a collection of good practices for designing and implementing projects addressing violence against women. Ten case studies based on projects in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Romania, Sierra Leone and Turkey were analyzed for the handbook. These are described in a complementary volume entitled, 'Programming to address violence against women'. Source: UNFPA, 2006
  
• IMAGE Study
  This study looks at the effect on intimate partner violence (IPV) of an intervention that combined microfinance with a participatory gender and HIV training program. After two years, risk of past year IPV was reduced by over half . The study concludes that social and economic interventions can substantially reduce IPV by empowering women.
  

Prevention and youth

• Improving U.S. Global AIDS Policy for Young People: Assessing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
  The report identifies three major shortcomings of PEPFAR in addressing HIV/AIDS and young people: Ideology has trumped science in PEPFAR's HIV prevention strategy for young people; PEPFAR resists linking HIV prevention with reproductive health care and services; and PEPFAR does not pay adequate attention to HIV-positive adolescents as a vulnerable population. Source: Advocates for Youth
  
• Abstinence only education doesn’t work in developed countries
  This article reports on the results of research on abstinence only sex education programmes in the United States. The research was not able to find any significant evidence that such initiatives reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy or affect sexual behaviour.