Education International, Education Development Center, and the World Health Organisation have developed this toolkit to help educators and their unions support and involve educators who are living with HIV. Emphasis is placed on eliminating stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV in order to enable support and involvement in all union activities. The toolkit will be used by union leaders and educators in the EFAIDS programme in 35 countries around the world.The first section of the toolkit provides background information on the issues of stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV and greater involvement of people living with HIV. The main focus of the kit is the tools to help educators and unions conduct activities in the five educator union priority working areas listed below: Research: provides tools to collect information necessary to carry out the other working areas, including learning about the needs of educators who live with HIV and ways to support them, and finding out about the groups and organisations that provide relevant services. Union policy development: focuses on development of union HIV and AIDS policy, including greater involvement of people living with HIV, in order to demonstrate leadership and commitment to all union members on these issues. Advocacy: provides information on engaging the government and learning institutions to affect policy change.Publicity: helps create a strategy to reach all union members and the larger community with key messages on eliminating stigma and discrimination and providing support for and greater involvement of people living with HIV. Training: provides three training activities on key issues related to stigma and discrimination, accessing treatment services, and supporting oneself and others through testing and treatment. Also discusses the importance of capacity building for people living with HIv to enable them to contribute more to HIV and AIDS work. Focuses on developing skills so that educators can also affect learners.It is the integration of the five working areas as a coherent package that makes them most effective. Implementation of these tools will enable unions and educators to create change that leads to elimination of stigma and discrimination in educators' unions, greater support for educators living with HIV, and greater involvement of these educators in union activities at all levels.
Centro de Recursos de Salud y Educación