Reaching church leaders and congregations

When Millicent Phewa discovered that her local church in Umlazi, a township near Durban in South Africa's east-coast province of KwaZulu-Natal, did not have an HIV/AIDS community support programme, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Stigma and discrimination where Phewa lives have prevented many people from talking openly about their status, making it easy for community leaders to ignore the problem. Then she heard about a place where church leaders and members could learn how to develop an HIV/AIDS programme, tailored to the needs of their communities, and decided to participate. The project is located at McCord's Hospital in Durban and run by the Sinikithemba Care Centre, which also provides HIV/AIDS counselling courses for churches. According to project manager Welly den Hollander, churches - often neglected in existing HIV/AIDS interventions - are a good place to start when establishing an HIV/AIDS project, as they have access to material and financial resources, and are influential in their communities. There are four sessions in the Sinikithemba training, as well as a number of refresher courses. The first part of the programme provides basic HIV/AIDS education, guidance on positive living and how to care for people living with HIV/AIDS. The second session deals with mother-to-child transmission (MTCT), antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and drug adherence, while subsequent sessions cover child and orphan care, grants, home-based care, treatment of opportunistic diseases and how to build psychosocial support networks. Ultimately, church members decide which target groups in their community they want to reach, and then develop a plan to implement their own programmes. Sinikithemba has been training church congregations in KwaZulu-Natal since 2001, eventually reaching about 5,000 people in various church groups throughout the country. At the end of 2004 Phewa graduated from the Sinikithemba programme as an HIV/AIDS counsellor. In January she formed a committee from members of the Methodist Church and now leads a small team of HIV/AIDS counsellors, who provide psychosocial support to church and community members. Every Sunday her priest reserves 10 minutes of the service for Phewa to talk to the congregation about HIV/AIDS-related issues. "We hope that this way people will gain more knowledge about [HIV/AIDS] and get tested, so that they can be helped," Phewa told PlusNews. To help the trainees apply lessons learnt during the Sinikithemba programme, den Hollander and her team visit the church communities a few months after their graduation, where they monitor, evaluate and give feedback on the strengths and gaps of the newly implemented HIV/AIDS programmes. "The programme makes people understand that they can do something [about HIV/AIDS] and gives them advice on what to do ... pastors and priests have become more open towards making an AIDS programme part of their ministry," den Hollander commented. She admitted that although more churches in the area had introduced HIV/AIDS campaigns, the success of such interventions would ultimately depend on the commitment of everyone involved.