Community leaders inspire others living with HIV to end their own self-stigma and value their worth. Community leaders advocate for the needs of their community and impact policy and research. Community leaders galvanize others to become leaders themselves. https://www.thewellproject.org/hindi
The Well Project's blog
Every year, World AIDS Day provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the incredible advances that we have made as a community over the last three decades and to honor the advocates and activists who have changed the course of this epidemic, including those we have lost and those who continue to tirelessly move us forward.
If there is anything the past several weeks have reminded us, it is that we live in times of infuriating denial and powerful, wide-ranging truth-telling. From climate breakdown, to an abusive and divisive new Supreme Court justice, to the attempted erasure of our sisters and brothers of transgender experience, to numerous heinous hate crimes, there seems to be no end to the ways our communities bear the violence of disregard by those in power.
While attending a session on HIV and healthy aging at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, one woman spoke passionately about the need for increased visibility of older people living with HIV.
While many four letter words come to mind regarding yesterday's House vote to pass the American Health Care Act (labeled by some as an "act of monstrous cruelty"), the one we need to keep at the forefront is HOPE. In our community, we've seen the transformative change that hope can bring—helping people feel less alone and less self-stigma, and empowering people to better advocate for themselves and others. Where there is hope, there is change. We, at The Well Project, have established an amazing support community where people lift each other up by sharing their stories, educating themselves...
As many of you know, earlier this year, we re-launched our website in an effort to ensure that it remains a leading resource of HIV information and community support for women and girls from all over the world. In addition to a clean new design with increased graphics, the new site features an easier navigation/search system, integrates the A Girl Like Me blog, and includes many new social media functions to help users connect with one another and exchange information.
As the leaves started to change and my favorite season of the year began, I realized that it has been just a little over a year since I became executive director of The Well Project, which made me reflect on some of the highs and lows of the very busy past 12+ months! As some of you know, I joined The Well Project in 2009 as the director of online services, and brought with me a long history of work in the field of HIV. I began working in HIV education in 1995, shortly after my sister was diagnosed with AIDS. Based on her low number of T-cells (less than 100), she had been living with HIV/AIDS...
As many of you know, a primary focus of The Well Project is to offer community support and advocacy development initiatives to address stigma, discrimination, and the need for enhanced leadership for women and girls. HIV treatment advocacy means many things to many people, but at its core, it focuses on optimizing the quality of--and increasing access to--care and treatment for people living with HIV. Treatment advocacy can take place at any level, including the individual level. Self-advocacy means feeling empowered to manage your own care; examples include asking questions at your doctor's...
It has always been a long-term goal of The Well Project to have all of our online resources in one place, so as to be able to combine information with real world experiences and connections. The technology of our new website has finally allowed us to reach that milestone. Therefore, we have recently migrated the entire A Girl Like Me blog onto The Well Project website and will soon be closing down the "old" blog site and redirecting the www.girllikeme.org URL to this A Girl Like Me section on the website. We have already closed down comments on the "old" blog, but comments can be made on the...
Sonya posted a new blog, I Made a Vow... on A Girl Like Me’s Voices from our Allies: Lynette was in a Harlem hospital on the 3rd floor in a room alone, and refused to give her life to Christ as I stood there begging! Quarantined due to the opportunistic infection, her body was plagued with things besides her AIDS diagnosis. I pleaded with her that people said God was a just God, healer, a loving God, and most of all a forgiving God… “Let’s give him a chance together.” Lynette, just stared ahead as if off into a dream, she bellowed “Sonya, F&%^* you and F&%* God.” I truly thought the ceiling...