Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Young women in southern Africa are at high risk of contracting HIV due to structural factors like poverty, poor education and gender-based violence. The INSTRUCT intervention aims to provide young women with better access to government support programs to reduce their reliance on transactional sex and prevent the spread of HIV. Recruiting young women to participate in this intervention proved challenging, and so we explored novel methods to engage this population. In discussions with young women, community leaders, and government service providers, we presented findings from our previous survey on the support networks of young women, and discussed strategies for how to reach young women with information about support programs. Short-term suggestions for sharing information about available programs included forming local committees of young women, using existing village committees, and using social media. Longer-term suggestions included creating a database of phone numbers for mass SMS notifications, and changing the requirements for program applications. Although community leaders felt program information should be shared via social media, young women were not interested in this strategy since they had limited access to phones, internet, and, at times, electricity. Trust was an important factor in determining who young women sought information from and it was often associated with people that had similar lived experiences. They preferred going to friends and family, rather than going to government service providers to learn about available support programs. These findings provide an opportunity to better include young women in support programs and prevent HIV in Botswana. Using existing committees within communities and building new connections to government service providers could help spread information. The participatory process of sharing findings with stakeholders and discussing local solutions is generalizable to others working with hard-to-reach populations.