Defeating HIV & AIDS together
Breaking the silence
The LUCSA member church leadership, which included leaders of women and youth groups, participated in the Pan-African Lutheran Church leadership Consultation on HIV and AIDS held in Nairobi in 2002. The participants themselves at that Consultation solemnly committed themselves and their churches to:
- Break the silence on HIV & AIDS
- Become healing community through prayer and action
- Learn and teach themselves and their communities about HIV and AIDS
- Provide care and counselling
- Prevention
- Further develop their theological understanding of the challenges of HIV and AIDS
- Provide care and counselling
- Advocacy
- Fight poverty and work towards securing the live hood of people living with and effectuated by HIV and AIDS
As a follow up to that Consultation LUCSA without wasting any time, began a process of developing an Action Plan which was adopted and launched at the LUCSA Executive and General Conference in June 2003.
LUCSA AIDS ACTION PLAN (LAAP)
The Action Plan has focused on the following activities:
- Awareness building by exposing church leaders to other AIDS action/prevention programs in the region to enable them to break the silence, fight stigma and discrimination and provide accurate information on HIV & AIDS;
- Capacity building / training in all aspects of the HIV & AIDS ministry to enable members churches to be meaningfully involved in the fight against HIV & AIDS;
- Clinical Pastoral Care and Counselling course to equip pastors with knowledge and skills for the care of persons living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) and those affected
- Advocacy for the PLWHAs and the affected
- Treatment literacy to mobilize congregation to form treatment support groups
- Theological reflection on the challenges of HIV & AIDS and helping seminaries to mainstream HIV & AIDS issues in all theological subjects
- Provide financial support for member churches to implement their responses to HIV & AIDS
- Survival skills workshops for persons living with HIV & AIDS
- Promote opportunities for open dialogue across age and gender groups
- Promote Couple communication
- Promote community capacity enhancement
- Provide youth training that integrates HIV/ AIDS, life skills and Information technology (Infohut Project)
Our Achievements
Since the launching of the program LUCSA has made some very significant strides in motivating, facilitating / enabling and building the capacity member churches to respond urgently and purposefully to the AIDS epidemic.
The following are some of the highlights:
Workshops with church leaders on:
- Advocacy
- Policy formulation
- Strategic planning
Result is that today most of our church leaders are speaking openly on HIV & AIDS issues and have programs running in their churches.
- Learning and exposure visit for 23 churches leaders.
- Two hundred and forty (240) pastors trained in Clinical Pastoral care and Counselling.
- Positive living and survival skills workshop conducted for PLWHAs in South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These have resulted in the formation of support groups in their parishes, openness and stigmatization.
- Training of trainers (TOT) courses for:
- Peer educators
- Pastors trained in Pastoral Care & Counselling
- Home based care givers in palliative care treatment literacy advocates
- Orphan care givers
- Youth Trained in life skills / HIV/AIDS and information technology.
- Leaders trained in couple communication
- Resource persons trained in monitoring and Treatment literacy
- Leaders trained in community capacity enhancement
- Provided small grants to kick start a number of projects some of which are today among the best practices in the region e.g. Masangane Treatment
LAAP also contributed to the establishment of the following project and since then have been involved in their sustainability.
- Project of the Moravian church, Philippi AIDS Project in Cape Town;
- St Peter Child Care in Johannesburg;
- Good Hope Home Based Care project in Tembisa (Flora);
- Renascence Esperanca orphan care project in Mozambique;
- Besteranai advocacy treatment projects in Zimbabwe,
- Orphan care in Malawi;
- and Infohut Projects in KZN South Africa.
LUCSA facilitated the purchase of a CD 4 cell count machine for Betseranai in Zimbabwe and provided an HIV test kits as well as TVs VCRs and video Cassettes HIV Education material for member churches and communities.
Member churches are supported with promotion materials and small grants to commemorate the World AIDS Day.
