Positive Women: Access to Care and Treatment Theatre Campaign

This theatre-based project was organised at the behest of Yamuranai Support Group, a coalition of HIV-positive women based in Gokwe South Rural district in the Midlands province of Zimbabwe. In 2005, this group requested technical and financial support from NT to carry out a theatre-based advocacy campaign in order to address HIV/AIDS challenges in their area. Thus, the programme was participatory from its initial phases. Project activities included:

• Advocacy theatre skills training;
• Interactive theatre performances;
• Documentation
• Monitoring and evaluation

Following this process, between March and October 2005, the play “Non But Us” was produced and performed at 20 venues, reaching a total audience of 15,645. The audience included chiefs, headmen, councillors and parliamentarians, NGO representatives, government officials, and members of the business community.

Besides advocacy and awareness raising through the use of theatre and performance, Positive Women: Access to Care and Treatment draws on the following strategies:

• strengthening links between HIV-positive women at the district level, and enabling them to advocate on common concerns and on their own behalf;
• increasing individual HIV-positive women's abilities to engage local decision makers at every level;
• encouraging HIV-positive women to tell their stories;
• promoting the role of HIV-positive women in tackling gender inequalities, and in supporting care and treatment initiatives for people with HIV/AIDS (PWHA);
• strengthening the confidence of HIV-positive women through efforts to build assertive behaviour, teamwork, and activism;
• challenging gender inequalities that make women and girls more vulnerable to HIV; and
• engaging in networking and partnership in order to identify opportunities and strategies for increasing the sharing of experiences and best practices around these issues.

Women, Rights, HIV/AIDS, Gender.

According to organisers (citing figures from the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health Report, 2004): "Zimbabwe has the fourth highest number of people living with HIV in the world, that is 24, [or] 6% of sexually active adults. As the country moves towards the third decade of the HIV/AIDS scourge, there is a general shift in the nature of the epidemic from an HIV, to an AIDS epidemic. The implications are that, more people are falling sick, becoming less productive and requiring more care and treatment. In the recent past, HIV/AIDS were more pronounced in urban areas, and now the epidemic has rapidly moved into rural areas and the infection rates are now between three and five times higher in women then in men. A number [of] economic, cultural and literacy factors have resulted in wide spread disparities in access to care and treatment in rural Zimbabwe such as Gokwe south. For example, during the last few years, bilateral aid to Zimbabwe has decreased notably."