Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

To end AIDS by 2030, UNAIDS Fast Track goal 6 promotes social protection for people at risk of HIV. Poverty and lack of education in Botswana undermine young women's ability to negotiate safe sex. Access to existing social support programs that help young women to return to school, generate income or find employment could increase their negotiation position and reduce their HIV risk. Recent data showed that younger and less educated women who are at highest risk of HIV do not access these programs, however. We organized workshops with direct stakeholders: program officers delivering social support programs and vulnerable young women (18-29y; unemployed; out-of-school). Direct stakeholder groups made 14 Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) that indicate why young women do not access social support programs. In 5 deliberative dialogue workshops, stakeholders analyze these barriers; reflect on how to overcome them; and co-design improvement solutions to make social support programs more relevant for young women. The process makes young women part of the solution instead of the problem, empowering them while creating solidarity between them and program officers. FCMs and deliberative dialogue workshops create knowledge adapted to the local context and could generate solutions that may be feasible and acceptable for local stakeholders. We believe that this participatory approach to local problem solving could help vulnerable young women access social support programs; increase their social and economic participation, and decrease their HIV-risk.