Getting people talking in South Sudan

31 January 2007

When the Alliance was asked by UNAIDS and UNDP to help them establish a network of people living with HIV in South Sudan – a vast country with no mobile or landline phones, erratic satellite-based internet, no public transport and impassable roads – the only answer was to return to basics: face to face talking.

To connect people living with HIV from isolated support groups, the Alliance chartered a 60-year-old DC3 Dakota propeller plane, making use of airstrips cleared from the bush to pick people up and bring them together.

Networking, whether through email, phones or faxes, is essentially about creating a means for people to talk to each other freely. However good modern technology is at aiding communication, it still can’t beat good, old-fashioned chit-chat – or whatever your local word for it is!

For five days participants talked, shared experiences, hopes, fears, expectations and visions for the future. For many isolated groups, this was the first time they became aware of each other’s existence. By the end of the week, the participants had developed a vision, mission and values for a national network of people living with HIV. And by World AIDS Day 2006, the associations announced that they had agreed to form South Sudan’s first national network of people living with HIV.

Throughout 2007, the Alliance will continue to support the network, building capacity, and assisting it to obtain financial resources.

The benefits of networking for people living with HIV are well documented:

  • accomplishing something together that you could not accomplish alone
  • strengthening advocacy and influencing others, inside and outside the network
  • broadening understanding of an issue or struggle by bringing together different constituencies
  • sharing the workload, reducing duplication of effort and waste of resources
  • promoting the exchange of ideas, insights, experiences and skills
  • providing a needed sense of solidarity, and moral and psychological support
  • mobilising financial resources – under certain circumstances.

In 2007 the Alliance will also be publishing a new toolkit on networking. This will include how to start and maintain networks, as well as a how to assess and build their capacity. For more information contact smellors@aidsalliance.org.