UNAIDS-Art of Living (AOL) national planning workshop on Hindu Caucus

[Guest guest]

UNAIDS-Art of Living (AOL) national planning workshop on Hindu Caucus

Feb 2, 2009 – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the Art of Living

Foundation, inaugurated the two-day national planning workshop to

scale up the Hindu leaders response to HIV across the country, at the

Art of Living International Centre in Bangaluru on 31 Jan. 2009.

The Hindu leaders' caucus and its declaration on HIV in Jun. 2008

created immense enthusiasm and commitment by various Hindu leaders

from across the country. Since then a number of leaders have

incorporated HIV messaging into their discourses in large gathering.

In order to synergise these responses and organise them in a

sustainable manner at the state and district level, Art of Living

Foundation specially identified coordinators from their youth body-

WAYE (World Alliance of Youth Empowerment) who will work in

partnership with SACS in respective states.

The planning workshop brought together 32 coordinators of AOL-WAYE

from across 16 states, representatives from 6 SACS and

representatives from north east region and Punjab and was facilitated

by UNAIDS resource persons. Besides sensitising the WAYE coordinators

on HIV and issues of stigma and discrimination, the workshop focused

on identifying areas of faith based response, mapping opportunities

for HIV mainstreaming through faith based platforms and establish

mechanism for results oriented efforts in partnership with SACS.

Representatives from SACS facilitated small group discussion to help

the participants Understand the state level responses where religious

organisations can play an effective role. Dr Nita Mawar, a senior

researcher from National AIDS Research Institute, shared key findings

of studies on stigma and discrimination on HIV and provided basis for

evidence based planning for religious leaders.

The two days deliberation resulted in development of 16 state

specific action plans for engaging Hindu Leaders to maximize their

influence to spread positive messages in communities through

religious discourses, rituals, festival celebrations, religious

education and establishing meaningful partnership with positive

peoples' groups and vulnerable population through SACS.

http://www.unaids.org.in/displaymore.asp?

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