| Pretoria, South Africa, 03 March February 2010 (SAfAIDS Media) – Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS), with support from the MDG3 Fund, will be hosting a regional conference on the strategic linkages between HIV, gender and culture.
Venue: Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre, Boksburg, Johannesburg
Date: 12 – 13 April, 2010
Time: 0800hrs -1700hrs
The cross-cultural conference, which will be held under the theme “The HIV/Culture Confluence: Changing the River’s Flow – Possibilities and Challenges,” will draw together participants from Africa, Asia and South America to share evidence and programmatic good practices for addressing HIV prevention and gender based violence in a cultural context.
SAfAIDS observed that, despite having worked towards gender equity in Africa for many years, many programme implementers and policy makers still lack in-depth understanding and appreciation of traditional and cultural practices and their link to HIV. As a result, they use a “blame” approach which propagates a negative view of African cultures and has led to communities building up walls of resistance- effectively slowing down progress towards the achievement of women’s rights and HIV prevention.
“We realised that there are better ways of working within the realm of cultures that does not alienate the custodians of these cultures such as capacity building of communities to support them to understand how culture is linked to gender inequality and HIV and focusing only on addressing the negative cultures while promoting the positive ones,” SAfAIDS executive director, Mrs Lois Chingandu said.
Traditional leaders, researchers, community workers, programme implementers, governments, development agencies, policy makers, NGO representatives, media and donor organisations are all invited to attend the conference and exchange their knowledge, experiences, good practices and research findings.
For more information contact, Tariro Chikumbirike, SAfAIDS Media on tariro@safaids.net, Tel, +27123610899
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