• Faith-based action and interaction at AIDS 2010
  
  • Multi-Faith Pre-Conference
  • Faith-based IAC Seminar
  • Multi-Faith Networking Zone
    

• Treatment funding a key issue
  
  • Post-IAC advocacy opportunities: MDG Summit, Global Fund Replenishment
    

• Focus On: Bread for the World

• Namibia drops travel restrictions

• HARC - a new network is born!

• More religious leaders sign HIV pledge

• Award announcement

• Calendar of events

Download the bulletin as a PDF here

• 15 October is International Day for Rural Women
• 16 October is World Food Day
• 17 October is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
• 11-16 October is Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Committee on Food Security (CFS) meeting, Rome, Italy
  
  

The EAA has produced a resource guide for the Week of Action. The guide offers action ideas, as well as worship resources, including a liturgy and a prayer card. Copies of these resources will be posted to members and partners soon. You can use this guide to help you effectively take part in the 2010 Churches' Week of Action on Food together with others around the world. The electronic version of the guide and other resources are available online at: http://www.e-alliance.ch/en/s/food/2010-churches-week-of-action-on-food/ 

What can I do?

• Hold a worship service focused on food and gender on the Sunday at the beginning or end of the Week of Action or on both days. Use or adapt the liturgy found in the EAA resource guide.
• Encourage a national letter writing campaign calling national governments to safeguard communal land against land grabbing using the EAA Model Letter Adopt, adapt, collect signatures and send to the same people/institutions on the same day.
• Organize an Agape meal prepared with food produced by women or purchased from fair trade shops and invite guests (including local politicians, press, celebrities etc). Use the EAA prayer card before meals.
• Enter the EAA Food for Life competition by writing and submitting sermons on food and gender for promotion in 2011. Details of the competition will be available online during the Week of Action or you can write to sermons@who-needs-spam.e-alliance.ch
• Let the media know about your events or write a letter to the editor to let more people know about the issues around food and gender.
• Tell us what you are doing! Inspire others and share your ideas by sending information on your events and actions to foodweek@who-needs-spam.e-alliance.ch

More action ideas are available in the resource guide. Should you have any questions or require more information pertaining to the Week of Action, please email: amunzara@who-needs-spam.e-alliance.ch

For past Action Alerts see http://www.e-alliance.ch/en/s/news/action-alerts/

There was good news in Vienna. Vaccine research is creeping forward. Trials of microbicidal gels appear to offer hope for greater protection of women. Male circumcision is gaining popularity in some regions. Lowered infection rates prove prevention programs incorporating behavior change are effective.

But there was also bad news, much of it centered around a fall off in financial support. A study released by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance showed a flatlining of AIDS funding for faith-based organizations working with HIV and AIDS–a serious problem given that faith-based groups provide up to 70 percent of health care in some rural and poorly-resourced countries.

“We’re really at a tipping point in the struggle against HIV and AIDS,” said the Rev. Donald Messer, executive director of the Center for the Church and Global AIDS. “Once the flavor of the month for funders, it seems to be going out of favor. We’re challenged today by AIDS funding fatigue. Some people are more interested in easier diseases to treat, less controversial ones like malaria. Some of the crisis is due to the global economic crisis, but it’s also clear that governments are not cutting back on military expenditures.”

The Vienna conference introduced what many are calling “Treatment 2.0,” a push to spend AIDS money more efficiently in an era when massive funding is now but a memory.

“The days of the big numbers are gone. Treatment 2.0 means doing more with what we’ve got,” said Nicoli Nattrass, Director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit and Professor in the School of Economics, University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. She said the growth in AIDS funding early in the decade was made possible by a worldwide economic boom. “It’s amazing at the end of the boom that we’ve managed to keep funding where it is,” she said.

Others can’t accept that.

“I’m sad to hear that the days of the big numbers are gone, because big numbers of people infected with HIV are what we continue to have in Africa,” said Peter Mugyenyi, director of the Joint Clinical Research Center in Kampala, Uganda. “Africa is a continent that must not depend on donors for its development, but we have an emergency in our midst.”

Michele Broemmelsiek, the AIDSRelief chief of party for Catholic Relief Services, said most faith-based groups are going to have a hard time with Treatment 2.0.

“At a certain point, you can’t do any more with less, you’ve reached every efficiency, you’ve maximized everyone’s time, you’ve figured out how to make patient flow work like a dream, there isn’t more efficiency to add to the system, and yet you’ve got to add more people to treatment,” she said.

“It’s a good Catholic premise that we be good stewards of the money we get, so we should be always striving to do more with less. But we also have to be realistic. There’s a lot of need out there, and the treatment facilities are doing the best they can. Many are operating on a shoestring budget now, so it’s hard to imagine there’s a lot more they can do with less support.”

Veena O’Sullivan, head of the HIV team for Tearfund, said the work of faith-based organizations is going to be even more important as fewer resources are made available for the fight against the virus.

“Bill Gates and others came here to talk about task shifting, but who are the people who are going to take on those tasks? It is the volunteer force, such as the 5.7 million people in Nigeria who volunteer to help others living with HIV and AIDS. These are the people who provide care and support, who come to take people to hospitals,” she said.

O’Sullivan said Tearfund’s partners and other faith-based organizations participated in new ways in the Vienna conference. “They went to discussions they wouldn’t have gone to six years ago. There’s a real desire to engage, to understand. All voices need to be heard, and our faith voices are as vital as the others. This conference was valuable in that everyone got to say what they thought. And they were heard. There was antagonism at times, but you have to take that on the chin and really work to understand the root of the problems.”

The Rev. Dr. Richard Fee, general secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada and chair of the board of the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, agreed that faith-based voices were listened to in Vienna.

“I’ve been amazed at how input from faith groups has been sought throughout the conference. They’ve been referenced in the scientific discussions, sought out in the Global Village, and many are saying they need greater involvement from faith-based groups in order to reach vulnerable populations. Yet we need even more dialogue between scientists and faith communities if we’re going to strengthen our common strategies to combat HIV.”

Father J.P. Mokgethi-Heath, an Anglican priest in South Africa, said religious voices were less segregated in Vienna.

“The voices of faith-based people were integrated into other presentations in a much better way than I saw in Mexico City [the site of the 2008 International AIDS Conference]. So we had a bigger diversity of people who came to listen to us, and they remarkably didn’t walk out on us,” said Mokgethi-Heath, a member of the International Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV (INERELA+).

Vienna residents who belong to faith communities also benefited from having the conference held in their home town, said the Rev. Carsten Koch of the Lutheran Church of Austria. He served on a local committee that hosted faith leaders for a one-day “pre-conference,” as well as a public interfaith service at the beginning of the July 20 human rights march through the center of Vienna.

“HIV and AIDS is now an important theme for religious groups in Vienna, much more than it was before,” he said.

Some participants found particular aspects of the conference helpful. “We discussed for the first time in the plenary sessions the intersection between women and HIV and violence, something we deal with in Africa from a faith perspective but which doesn’t get enough attention,” said the Rev. Dr. Nyambura Njoroge, coordinator of the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa.

Sophie Dilmitis, HIV and AIDS coordinator for the World YWCA, noted there was welcome gender equality in selecting speakers for the plenary sessions, a first in the long series of AIDS conferences. “This conference has done a much better job of addressing the needs of women in the program,” she said.

Yet Dilmitis said young people remained under-represented. “We need to do better at involving young people, because youth need to become better activists. Our activism has become too polite. We need to be more angry, make people uncomfortable about the status quo, especially when it comes to young people,” she said.

Dilmitis believes that faith-based groups need to better organize their presence at future conferences, such as the one scheduled for Washington, DC, in 2012.

“One of things we heard in the pre-conference was Kevin Moody [the international coordinator and CEO of the Global Network of People Living with HIV], who put a little bit of pressure on the churches. He said that when churches and religious institutions accept people living with HIV and people with diverse sexualities, and when the church becomes a safe space for people who are diverse and have different needs, then we are going to get somewhere. It’s sad to have heard that call and then come to the International AIDS Conference and find so little on faith,” she said.

Yet Dilmitis said she wasn’t discouraged, and quoted a phrase used during a July 22 conference panel by Bishop Yvette Flunder, senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco. “She said this work is not for wimps,” Dilmitis said.

Notes to editors

The 18th International AIDS Conference had 19,100 participants from 193 countries.

For more information on faith-based participation at the 18^th International AIDS Conference, visit www.iac.e-alliance.ch. Photos on the site may be reprinted freely provided credit is given to the photographer/EAA. High resolution photos available by contact sspeicher@who-needs-spam.e-alliance.ch

Media contact: Sara Speicher, +44 7821 860 723 (mobile), sspeicher@who-needs-spam.e-alliance.ch

Hjelmåker urged them to make good on one of the commitments that had been made, by “challenging and supporting governments to meet their moral duty to implement their promises on HIV in their priorities, practices and financial support.

”The press conference was co-organized by Cordaid, Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, INERELA+, UNAIDS, World AIDS Campaign, World YWCA.“Together we must do more: My personal commitment to action” with signatures is available at: www.HIVcommitment.net

For more information contact Sara Speicher, (in Vienna until 23 July: +43 699 102  685 25) or +44 7821 860 723 (mobile), sspeicher@e-alliance.ch

What can you do?

1. Share stories you know by using the template below to provide either:

• A brief description of cases or stories illustrating positive examples of just food production, trade and distribution or;

• Stories of how unjust food production, trade and distribution systems impact on the livelihoods of people.

2. Please share this call with your partners and networks and encourage their participation.

We plan to collect stories/case studies for use in education within churches, communities and partners, and for advocacy with governments and international agencies. The compiled report will be shared through the EAA website.

Deadline

Please submit stories and case studies before 26 November 2010 to amunzara@who-needs-spam.e-alliance.ch 

Please visit en/s/food/food-and-hiv/http://www.e-alliance.ch/ for more information on the collection of case studies/stories.

Template for Stories on Food Production, Trade and Distribution Systems

Remark: The approximate size of the expected reply is indicated for each question. You may add appendices, and refer to them in this form. This form, once filled in, should not exceed five pages. We appreciate your understanding. Please fill in one form per case. Visual evidence (graphs, statistics, and pictures) is appreciated. You are free to narrate a story but the description should include the following elements:

For past Action Alerts see http://www.e-alliance.ch/en/s/news/action-alerts/

• UN Updating Comprehensive Framework of Action       
• Countries Tackling Hunger With a Right to Food Approach
• G8/G20 Letters on Food and HIV
• Save the Date: Churches Week of Action on Food
• Right to Food Publications: Commission for Justice, Peace and Development, India
• Collection Case Studies: Food and HIV
• Bread for All Easter March
• No More Imported Frozen Chicken Please ACDIC
• CIDSE-CARITAS-APRODEV Commentary on the EU Food Security Policy
• Focus On: The Congregation of the Sisters of the Little Flower of Bethany
  
  
  

This month's bulletin can be found here