Skills Building Workshops
About the Skills Building Programme
The Skills Building Programme is a unique component of the conference, spanning the community, leadership and scientific programme. Its purpose is to offer workshops covering a diverse range of topics with the principle aim of providing a stage for teaching specific skills or strategies to specific audiences that can then be applied within their own work or life settings once they return home.
The programme also helps stimulate new and stronger partnerships for problem-solving related to the many different HIV-related needs. People share vital expertise with colleagues from other regions of the world to help overcome the many barriers to care, prevention and management of the epidemic.
Conference delegates have the opportunity to put learning into action. The workshops will use interactive, creative training methods on subjects of critical importance to those facing the realities of the AIDS pandemic today – whether they are a medical professional, researcher, politician, administrator, outreach worker, peer advocate, caregiver and/or a person living with HIV/AIDS.
Skills Building Workshop Selection Process
All skills building workshop proposals submitted to the Conference will go through a peer-review process carried out by an international Skills Building Reviewing Committee, each proposal will be assessed by two reviewers, one of which will come from the same region as the proposal’s issue or topic. The skills building workshop review period will take place late February – mid-March 2008. Notification to submitters will be done in April 2008.
Skills Building Workshops Categories
1. Scaling up and Linkages:
- Role of NGOs in strengthening health systems for scaling up
- complementary therapies and other treatment strategies
- harm reduction
- Convergence options for SRH and HIV in service delivery
- poverty and HIV
- Private Business sector and scaling up HIV/AIDS responses
- Violence against women
2. Latin America and the Caribbean: Lessons shared from a concentrated epidemic:
- cross-border/mobile populations
- faith-based approaches
- population-specific intervention development
- interventions for the underserved or never served
- harm reduction
- masculinities
3. Leadership, Advocacy and Policy:
- capacity building/sustainability strategies/healthy communities
- human resource and leadership development
- Accountability (fund management, monitoring and evaluation, reporting, etc.)
- resource mobilization (private, government, international)
- advocacy and influencing public policy and community programmes (local, national, regional, international)
- Gender equality
4. Intensifying involvement of affected communities and participation of civil societies:
- Role of government in enhancing the meaningful involvement of affected communities addressing vulnerabilities
- community organizing for change
- GIPA and empowerment of PHAs
- network and coalition building among various marginalized communities for better response
5. Science, medicine and community:
- Communicating evidence based science and medical breakthroughs
- interpretation and application of scientific information
- medical education for the non-medical client/worker
- HIV prevention clinical research as a bridge to direct care and treatment.
- accessing science in inaccessible situations
- treatment education/advocacy/medical trials