Practice 1: Acknowledgement & Recognition

[Geoff Parcell]

So far we have nine common principles which have emerged from the experiences. Are these relevant in your experience. Have you expeiences already shared or you are able to share other experiences which have different principles. A "principle" is a message that you can take from a story or experience. Try to frame the principle in the for If...(some action takes place)...then..... (this will be the result).

1. If you tap into the culture of young people they will apply what they know already

2. When individuals become role models, they inspire and empower their community

3. Involving religious leaders is key to make HIV/AIDS programmes a success

4. If you have clear information, support and access to knowledge, you can be brave dealing with your HIV status

5. If you convince communities that HIV is their problem, they will start taking care

6. If local people transfer the information in their own community, they prevent AIDS in their community

7. If you accept yourself, then you accept others

8. When we start sharing and discussing about the HIV infection then we are all able to understand it better

9. If you involve leaders traditions and policies can be revisited

Are these relevant in your experience. Have you experiences already shared or you are able to share other expeiences which have different principles. A "Principle" is a message that you can take from a story or experience. Try to frame the principle in the for If...(some action takes place)...then (this will be the result).
A "Common Principle" is a principle derived from more than on experience or situation.

Add your Principles and Common Principles here. Reference the story - on the blogs or write them here. If you have a comment on the existing Common Principles then share your experience.

As we grow this shared view of common principles we will learn together how to deal with Acknowledgement and Recognition, take a step towards becoming AIDS Competent and help others to do so too.

Laurence & Geoff

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In this forum, we will take three steps towards a global knowledge asset on Acknowledgement & Recognition:

1. We define a common vision of success in terms of acknowledgement and recognition (level 5).
2. We share our experience in addressing acknowledgement and recognition of HIV as an issue that concerns us, our community
3. We discuss and define the common principles emerging from our individual experiences
Therefore, as a first step, we now invite you to share with friends on this forum: what is success in terms of acknowledgement and recognition of HIV? What is you personal dream? What is the ‘dream’ situation for our own community? What will an AIDS Competent community have in place in terms of acknowledgement and recognition?

Please share your vision or dream here of what a great community acknowledging and recognizing the issue would be like, look like, sound like or feel like.

To start you off here is an example of what was dreamed by participants at the 2009 knowledge fair in Chiang Mai:
'There is no stigma and discrimination. HIV/AIDS is considered a normal disease and everybody uses their strengths to respond. Positive people set the example. People can live together as human beings. Everybody knows their status and can share it with others. Everybody is concerned and mobilises resources for prevention and care (we act together).'

If you have an example of acknowledgement and recognition that may inspire others please share it as a blog. Tag it 'Acknowledgement' so others can find it easily.

We look for ward to your dreams!

Laurence and Geoff

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear Geoff,

Many thanks for the notes. Very prompt and very well captured! It was a very fruitful discussion indeed.

Clubbing similar principles together is a good idea. If we explain the principles in a little more detail I feel that they would be more helpful to people who are looking for similar experiences. For eg in the principle “If we involve religious and other leaders in the discussion then traditions and policies can be revisited.” we could explain different kinds of leaders: village functionaries, political leaders and so on. Moreover, when we post the stories we need to put in the tag words carefully so that search by the user yields appropriate results.

Merging common principles will also be helpful in compiling stories. For instance, I know I have a story for principle 7 and I need to look for aspects in stories which fill in other principles.

Lau has made a very pertinent point about the need to use simple language. I recall a similar discussion with Phil. Use of simple words would also help in translation to other languages. In India, the Self-assessment framework has been translated in at least 5-6 local languages and its not been an easy task. In one of the ACP events, we tried translating a principle in my mother tongue, Hindi and it was hard. I was not too pleased as it did not convey the meaning intended in the English version.

Look forward to more learning.

Warm regards,

Rituu

[Geoff Parcell]

Hi All

Following on from our last discussion I have made changes to the knowledge asset on responses to Acknowledgement and Recognition. Have a look at it and see what you think.

Specifically I looked at merging the two principles " If local people transfer the information in their own community, they prevent AIDS in their community." with " If you convince communities that HIV is their problem, they will start taking care."
My suggestion is that we go with a single Principle "When communities accept the spread of HIV is their issue, they will take steps to prevent it and care for those affected." Suggested improvements welcomed!

I also took up Laurence's suggestion to order the principles according to the 5 levels on the self assessment. I looked at this and it seemed to work, though I am reluctant to label them as "To get to level 3 do this" because it cannot be as prescriptive as this and anyway taking an action may move a community much further than level 3. Nevertheless the exercise did seem to put them into an order where they built on one another.

The group working on this will meet by Skype again on 9th December when we will move on to discuss the practice of Inclusion. Let em know if you are interested in joining this discussion.

Geoff

[Gaston]

Hi Geoff. I think the merging is possible. It almost seems to me there is a hierarchy in the two principles. Obviously people will not transfer information if they do not think it's their issue. So in that sense 'transferring information' seems a means, strategy or specific local response to take steps to prevent HIV. So I agree with the merging.

Gaston