African Stepping Stone trainers participate in Reproductive Well-being & Domestic Violence workshops
May 2002

Two Ugandan Stepping Stone trainers have been selected to participate in a series of Building Bridges workshops that will help them share understandings and approaches in the fields of Sexual and Reproductive Well-being and Domestic Violence.

Joyce Kadowe Namulondo, an Advisor for Social and Economic Mobilisation with Uganda Aids Commission and Baron Oron, a lead training programmes facilitator for Action Aid Uganda, Kenya and ACORD of Tanzania will be joining eight other African Stepping Stones trainers to visit UK and Nicaragua during the month of May.

Ten trainers from Uganda, Gambia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are scheduled to meet together with UK and Nicaraguan practitioners involved in gender and HIV work and to look at lessons emerging from their varied experiences.

These exchange visits are being facilitated by Exchange Programme, a networking and learning programme on health communication for development hosted by Healthlink Worldwide and funded by Department for International Development (DFID).

The first workshop will be held in Charney Manor near Oxford, UK from 5-7 May 2002 from where they will proceed to Managua, Nicaragua on 8 May for a ten-day exchange programme with the Nicaraguan Association of Men Against Violence (AHCV) and a feminist organisation Puntos de Encuentro.

Returning to the UK on 19 May, the group will be joined with three Nicaraguan practitioners for a further two days of workshops, analysing and building on the learning from the exchange. There will be a more publicly day of presenting the fruits of the visit to both countries on 22 May.

The aim of these exchange workshops is for the Africans and Nicaraguans to learn from one another and to build on the strengths of everyone's experiences in very different contexts, in order to improve everybody's ways of working. The aim is to develop gender-sensitive approaches to sexual and reproductive well-being which engage men more fully, and to build and independent international network of those working with participatory approaches in this area. ends

About Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones is a life-skills training package on gender, sexual and reproductive well-being, communication and relationship skills. Created in response to the AIDS crisis in Africa, Stepping Stones is listed by UNAIDS in its best practice series for community mobilisation and is the winner of a BMA film award. It is now being widely adapted and used in over 40 countries in Africa, Asia and beyond.

Exchange Programme is a networking and learning programme on health communication for development. The programme is hosted by Healthlink Worldwide and funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). Exchange aims to share widely information and knowledge on effective health communication and to support strategic approaches to health communication. It also aims to increase the involvement of southern-based organizations in generating, analysing and applying good health communication.

For further information, please contact:
Contact Person
Frank Mubiru
Networking/Information Officer, Exchange
A networking and learning programme on health communication for development,
c/o Healthlink Worldwide, 40 Adler Street, London, E1 1EE, UK
Tel:+44 (0)20 7539 1570(general),+44 (0)20 7539 1574 (direct)
Fax: +44 (0)20 7539 1580
E-mail: mubiru.f@healthlink.org.uk
Website: http://www.healthcomms.org

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Last update: May-2, 2002