On 15-16 of September 2016 HIV-positive leaders from the self-help group “Kyianka+” and social workers who provide services to HIV-positive women gathered together for two days in Kyiv to participate in the training “Using ageing & gender approaches to expanding Immediate Intervention model”.

As our self-help group for HIV+ women in Kyiv is constantly develops and grows we get more and more women who become volunteers and activists willing to help one another more professionally and eager to get more knowledge and skills. With our partners from Positive Women of the World (PWW) and Kyiv city branch of Network of PLWH we gathered all these requests from our clients and organized an educational event to cover such important issues as HIV and Aging, Self-health management (with a special focus on nutrition, medical check-ups, adherence to treatment, prevention and treatment of Hep C etc.), gender and gender-related stigma and strategies for coping with it.

Our specially invited international trainers from PWW, Sylvia Paulette de Rugama Prado and Jenny Tsiami, gave special focus to the topic of gender. The training participants had a lot of questions regarding:

• What is gender? What is the difference between gender, sex and sexuality? What is the gender roles?
• What is gender sensitive service? Is there any difference from other services? What kind of gender sensitive service can be provided to clients and by clients? How to provide it?
• What is gender-related violence? How to work with the victim of the violence using gender sensitive approach?

The two days of training were very emotional and held in a warm atmosphere and the best traditions of self-help groups. As a result of the training HIV-positive women felt really empowered to expand their volunteer and professional work activities to gender-related violence and providing help and support for women and girl survivors of violence. Also all the participants expressed a strong desire to be included into fundraising activities to support the work of “Kyianka+” and underlined how this group is important for all the HIV+ women in Kyiv city and how good it would be to create similar support groups in other cities of Ukraine.

The training took part under the financial support of Gilead Sciences Europe Ltd within the project “Expanding immediate intervention model to ensure adherence to HIV and hepatitis C (“HCV”) treatment and improve quality of life for HIV positive women in Kyiv”.