SIZAKUYENZA

Vision:
To create a sustainable people’s driven HIV/Aids model in the Western Cape, to stop the continuous increase of HIV infected, through prevention and support in the urban poor communities. HIV/Aids intervention model will be exposed and adjusted nationally through the networks linked to the Coalition of the Urban Poor (CUP), especially the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP)

Activities:

• Providing information and awareness around HIV/Aids to community organisations and individuals living in poverty
• Providing clinical and psychological support to the communities with regards to HIV/Aids and related social problems
• To provide training – peer educator to provide information on a large scale and counselors to provide clinical and psychological support

Goals:

• To consolidate the Western Cape experience and and replicate it nationally.
• To enable poor communities to turn HIV and AIDS into a mobilizing opportunity – not as a mechanism for fighting for rights, but as a means of enabling communities to respond in an organized and communal way to the socio-economic issues underlying the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
• To empower women, protect children and engage men in the sexual power relations that form the basis for the HIV/AIDS challenge, not through the promotion of abstention, faithfulness and use of condoms, but through the creation of safe spaces for women and children.

These strategies have lead to the formation of caregiver networks linked through savings in the Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal. These savings networks of people affected and infected by HIV/ADIS creates safe social space where women, children and concerned men can engage around support and the resolution of need. These savings groups often lead to the construction of safe houses in the communities themselves.