Tagged: Community engagement

  • Advancing racial equity in Jefferson County, Alabama: Lessons learned from the Voices of Truth campaign

    For centuries, art has been used to spark conversations and social change. And murals painted on buildings are a powerful way to both turn art into activism and make art accessible to the community.

    For the past two years, FHI 360’s social marketing and communication department has partnered with the Jefferson County Memorial Project (JCMP) and Kids in Birmingham 1963 on the Voices of Truth communication campaign, which is part of JCMP’s efforts to advance racial equity in Jefferson County, Alabama. The campaign engages county residents in cross-race dialogue as a pathway toward truth and reconciliation, digging deep into issues pertaining to equity, justice, community voices and more through methods such as billboards, conversation starter cards and social media posts.

    Recently, our team traveled to Birmingham — the county seat of Jefferson County nicknamed “the Magic City” — to witness what was just a dream a couple of years ago: a mural that encourages community members to own their voice, start a conversation about the history of racial violence in Jefferson County and be part of social change.

    Here are some of our takeaways from the campaign.

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  • Refocusing on the fight: Communicating about HIV during COVID-19

    While COVID-19 has been at the center of health concerns since early 2020, the fight to end HIV continues. How are HIV communicators in the United States effectively engaging with their priority audiences? Here, four HIV communicators explain why they are passionate about their work and discuss how, in the current environment, they can best reach people in the United States who historically have had to bear the largest burden of HIV.

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  • Social media connects girls and shared experiences with HIV prevention

    The Cookie Jar is a Facebook group run by FHI 360’s Accelerating Progress in Communities (APC 2.0) project to support young women in Botswana in shifting social and gender norms. Members talk about issues like HIV risks, gaps in knowledge about infections and access to treatment. Typically, young women like me do not use HIV services despite risks of infection or violence in relationships. In Botswana, many young women engage in intergenerational and transactional sex. The Cookie Jar provides a place for young women to seek information, find out how to get care and receive peer support.

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  • Pandemic preparedness: Four strategies to keep HIV programs on track during COVID-19

    A little more than a month after World AIDS Day 2019, COVID-19 started to impact our HIV programs in Asia as countries like Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam began quarantine. Community testing ground to a halt. People living with HIV worried about access to their medications. HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) enrollment slowed. COVID-19 testing diverted laboratories from HIV services. By March 2020, the rest of the world was equally impacted. FHI 360’s HIV programs were determined to continue serving people, but there were deep concerns. We were not alone, of course; the global HIV community was facing COVID-19 together. But with so much uncertainty, we wondered: Would COVID-19 substantially set back hard-won gains toward epidemic control? Did we have the tools in hand, or could we develop the tools, to weather this crisis?

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  • Youth engagement — and empowerment — holds promise for strengthening community resilience to violent extremism

    Stop for a minute to think back to when you were a “youth” — say, when you were 19 years old — transitioning from adolescence into adulthood.

    • Did you have ideals and ideas that motivated you and peers and adult mentors who positively influenced you?
    • Did you have family who supported you and a community that you felt part of and in which you had a voice?
    • Did you have a sense of who you were and access to physical and psychological safe spaces where you could express your identity?

    If you answered yes, then you probably have a positive recollection of this period in your life. You were likely content with your trajectory into adulthood.

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