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Puerto Rico: Preventing High Risk Behaviour Among Teenage Girls
– Reported, March 28, 2012
WORKING WITH HIV-POSITIVE WOMEN
Based on our perspective of womens comprehensive health, a few years ago we joined with national efforts against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, specifically in the female population. In 1993, the local Health Department earmarked funds for working with HIV-positive women, which gave rise to the project Recovering Time and Space, which at that time focused on providing training opportunities and support for HIV-positive women, most of whom were infected by their partners.
From 1993 to 1995, Taller Salud visited the clinics that provide treatment to women living with the virus and began to organise support groups and promote prevention methods for HIV-positive women. We offered a series of workshops on a wide variety of issues, including sexuality, relationships, alternative medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, and self-esteem. We also provided child-care services and educational activities for children of women living with HIV/AIDS. In terms of participation, however, working with HIV-positive women was quite difficult, and over time, attendance in the workshops dropped onsiderably. Caring for their own health is not a priority for many women living with HIV/AIDS.
After working with HIV-positive women for two years, we consolidated a group of women from various communities who wanted to focus attention on primary prevention. This strategy focused on the need to reach women at a younger age in order to strengthen their understanding of risky behaviour, to work on different attitudes from a gender perspective, and to foster self-esteem in order to decrease the behaviour that puts women at risk for HIV. Our new work with young and adult women adopted a participatory methodology with strategies that prioritised womens physical, mental and spiritual health.
THE COMMUNITY OF LOIZA
In 1997, the project redirected its efforts towards the women in Loiza where we had set up offices and broadened our primary prevention services for young women. Loiza is an area some 30 minutes from Puerto Ricas capital, San Juan. Most of Loizas 30,000 inhabitants are Afro-Caribbean, and 68 per cent live below the US poverty line. The unemployment rate is 29.2 per cent. In addition, 34 per cent of the population is under age 15, and the school dropout rate is 47.3 per cent.
Only 67.9 per cent of all families in Loiza are two-parent families, and in 26.8 per cent of all families, the mother is the household head. During the past three years, Loiza has been among the three towns with the highest rates of adolescent pregnancy in the country. Historically, this community has been plagued by social problems related to racism, sexism and a lack of opportunities for growth and development. On the other hand, Loiza is blessed with a wealth of human, cultural and natural riches and has kept our countrys African heritage alive.
RECOVERING TIME AND SPACE
The main goal of the Recovering Time and Space project is to prevent the behaviour that places women at risk for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Our work promotes a message of empowerment and an understanding of the importance of comprehensive health for the entire community that we serve. Our work is based on the belief that risk for HIV/STDs is not an isolated aspect of womens health, but rather one more factor that puts womens health at risk. Therefore, our prevention work is an integral part of the series of participatory workshops on basic issues such as self-esteem, sexuality, contraceptive methods and negotiating condom use. Our initial strategy encourages women to know, love and respect themselves in order to gain control over their own lives and over their sexual, spiritual, physical and mental health.
The participants in our projects are young women between the ages of 15 and 17 who volunteer to take part in our training courses in womens health. They later train to become peer counsellors. Today, there are 20 young women in the group “Millennium Counsellors”.
Through this project, Taller Salud participates in the Community Planning Group, the Community Advisory Council on Research and Protocols, and the Puerto Rican HIV/AIDS Alliance, an umbrella group of grassroots community organisations working in HIV/AIDS in Puerto Rico.
At the same time, the young women who take part in our activities also participate in national and international days of activism, important to the feminist movement. These – including International Womens Day, the International Day against Violence against Women, the International Day of Action for Womens Health, and World AIDS Day – also have a significant impact on our prevention work in the communities.
Credits: Ivelisse Casado
More information at: http://www.cafra.org/spip.php?article166
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