If I kept it to myself - World YWCA

Young women intervene in a world with AIDS
HIV and AIDS is by nature a highly controversial
subject matter as the majority of infections
worldwide occur through sexual intercourse,
which is taboo for many people, including some
of our members. It has been both a challenge
and a joy to see the amount of information and
debate on the forum.
As we grew and collaborated with TakingITglobal
to design our interactive capacity building
website, we were able to reward our young
volunteers sending them to international
conferences, by networking them together for
collaborative projects and fundraising, assisting
them with grant proposals, applications, CVs, and
abstract-writing, providing training opportunities,
highlighting their work, and creating mechanisms
for networking and partnerships.
In February 2004, we held our first global
advocacy campaign gathering thousands of
students. GYCA organized advocacy and
awareness-raising events in 18 countries. The
events ranged from HIV and gender awareness
sessions for young boys in Pakistan to a peaceful
protest in front of the World Bank offices in
Zambia calling for debt cancellation for the
world’s 50 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
(HIPCs).
After the success of February’s campaigns,
UNAIDS called upon GYCA to hold a brief e-
consultation to provide young people input on
their Prevention Strategy. We recommended
that UNAIDS scale-up efforts especially in the
areas of youth friendly services, life skills based
education, and behaviour change communication
for young men and boys. Members discussed
programmes that are successful in their countries
and those that are obsolete and must be
updated.
Concurrently we launched our global mapping
project, to make contact with local, national,
and regional youth led or youth serving HIV and
AIDS initiatives and networks. In addition to
adding these to our Global Directory searchable
by country, region and thematic focus, we are
working to develop partnerships with these
organisations.
12 country reports were submitted, and a young
intern at UNFPA’s HIV/AIDS Branch, Sunita
Grote, and myself, compiled and edited the
reports into a publication published by UNFPA
called “Our Voices, Our Future: Young People
Report on Progress Made on the UNGASS
Declaration of Commitment on HIV and AIDS.”
In May 2004, I was invited to participate in the
International Youth Forum on young people’s
sexual and reproductive health and rights and the
Millennium Development Goals held in Buenos
Aires, Argentina. The forum was a wonderfully
refreshing opportunity for me to meet with 60
progressive young people from all over the world
who share common beliefs about human rights
and youth participation. We deconstructed four of
the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs):
education, gender equality, maternal health, and
HIV and AIDS, and wrote a booklet on where
sexual and reproductive health and rights fit
into the MDGs and why youth are crucial to the
attainment of the targets by 2015.
On June 2nd 2004, GYCA and GYP, with the
support of UNAIDS, UNFPA, and the other
cosponsors, organised a Breakfast with Young
People. We sat with Ministers of Health,
delegates, ambassadors, and heads of UN
agencies to dialogue directly on the needs of
young people worldwide on HIV and AIDS, about
the findings of the report, and how governments
can scale-up HIV and AIDS interventions to
effectively reach us.
The Breakfast was so effective that our
recommendations were taken into account
throughout the day, especially in the Prevention
Roundtable when delegates from three nations
(Guatemala, Chile, and Gambia) mentioned our
report and the needs of young people and HIV
and AIDS.
This was an opportunity to speak frankly about
why and how young people are infected and
affected, and to encourage decision-makers to
look at the context that creates vulnerability:
poverty, unemployment, gender inequality,
conflict, and stigma and discrimination. It was
also an opportunity to challenge leaders on why
they have not committed sufficient resources to
HIV and AIDS interventions for young people
which are highly cost effective, and why they
have not made use of the large pool of young
activists eager to enact change and halt the
pandemic.
Currently GYCA is spearheading efforts for
the Toronto Youth Force at the upcoming XVI
International AIDS Conference in Toronto
(August 13-18) with many other partners. We are
organizing a three day capacity-building preconference,
training young people in advocacy,
assisted young people to write abstracts and
apply for scholarships through a free online e-
course, helping them to fundraise, developing
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