Rights based Leadership and Decision Making Approach for Women Living with HIV and AIDS

Project Description

For the sole basis of this project, XXXXXXXXX is requesting from African Women Development fund an amount not exceeding USD$ 0,000. The amount will be used to promote the rights of women living with HIV/AIDS by integrating their participatory decision making and build the confidence and leadership of women living with HIV through economic empowerment in XXXXX Sub-county of Baringo County in Kenya for a maximum project period of 10 months. The project will involve a baseline data collection (Survey), on to identify the beneficiary women but this will be biased to target only those women living positively.

Grant Purpose

The grant will be used to promote the rights of women living with HIV/AIDS by integrating their participatory decision making skills and to build the confidence and leadership of women living with HIV through economic empowerment of positive living women in XXXXXX Sub-county of Baringo County in Kenya.

The grant will at large extend support leadership development through focused dialogues to inform women living positively of their rights as women and how they can built a stronger democratically driven teams and electing their own to leadership positions to promote participatory decision making. The principle priorities will be to inbuilt women’s right and confidence in running their own socio-Economic activities.

The project will be for a maximum project period of 10 months and will be aimed at strengthening the voices of positively living women by sensitizing them on the basic rights, freedoms and the importance of their participation in decision making in core areas of development.

Project objectives

Project intends achieves its set goals and outputs under the following objectives:

General objective

To promote the rights of women living with HIV/AIDS by integrating their participatory decision making and build the confidence and leadership of women living with HIV.

Specific objectives

1. To promote the rights of 20 women living with HIV/AIDS through participatory decision making and leadership confidence building.
2. To create awareness on women rights and sensitize positive living women on their rights within communities.

Project Activities

In order to achieve the purpose, goal, the objectives and the final output of this project Women Empowerment Group seeks to implement the following activities developed together with the project beneficiaries during the leading activities to XXXX’s World AIDS day;

• Beneficiary mapping/baseline survey – This activity will involve collection of basic data on the target beneficiaries in order to get the neediest cases. Criteria to be considered shall include the beneficiaries being HIV+ and financially disadvantaged women. An external consultant shall be competitively recruited to conduct the survey for objectivity.
• Women’s rights and confidence building interactive forum-Six interactive workshops shall be conducted, two per month, during the first three months of project implementation. These workshops are intended to sensitize positively living women of their basic rights as women and their rights as persons living positively. Additionally, the women will be capacity built on organizing into support and entrepreneurship skills, including group formation, development of group governance and management structures, group registration, election of leadership and secretariat. The workshops will be used to build confidence of women, develop their life skills, and advance their leadership skills, thus enabling them to be better decision makers. Lastly, the women will be capacitated to run their own social enterprises without recourse of fear for stigma associated with their status.
• Business incubator boot camp- 1 -day boot camp shall be conducted targeting each of the three selected groups of positively living women. The boot-camp, complete with business establishment and management props, shall involve female entrepreneurs who have excelled amidst difficulties coming not only as facilitators but long term role models who mentor the beneficiaries long into the future. Business knowledge and skills, ranging from business planning to start-up, operations, management, sales, marketing, expansion, financial management and financing, shall be inculcated.
•  End term project evaluation- This will involve an assessment of the project beneficiaries socio-economic status data on the impact of the project on their daily lives. An external competitively-recruited expert shall be contracted to conduct an impact evaluation. Such results shall be shared with AWDF as a report on the positive impact of the grant.

Project innovation

The innovation in this project is the self-driven approach for positive living women to enable them incubates what they know best to improve on their understanding of their rights as women, as persons living positively, participating in role playing to propel their socio-economic rights and built their own confidence in handing their own projects.

Women are powerful. Even the seemingly most disadvantaged of them have the power to better their lives and livelihoods given the opportunity. This project offers opportunities. Opportunities women can use to meet the demands of their lives and self-actualize. Unlike other development interventions which come in to “train” and “donate” free goods and services to “helpless beneficiaries”, this project places the beneficiary at the centre of the action, as the powerful decision maker charting and working towards the realization of her destiny. Female business gurus who’ve risen out of a position of disadvantage are used to show the way for currently disadvantaged women through practical, highly tailored capacity building that’s cognizant of the unique challenges and opportunities these women face. Working with women who are all HIV+ creates strong bonds thanks to their common status. Such groups tend to be strong, closely-knit and work passionately together towards their common goals.

Women’s right angle or approach to this project

The women’s right angle approach in this project is the sensitization and creation of awareness among positively living women on their rights as women and rights as persons living positively. The authority to control, organize and coordinate the entire project guarantees women their rights to make their own decisions and hence build their confidence.

The women’s involvement in the design and development of this project led to the coming up of this project idea and therefore positive living women are set to enjoy the full benefits of the project and also they will have competitive advantage over male dominance.

Positive living women will also empower themselves economically to counter economic and financial dependency on men. Beneficiaries to this project shall improve the livelihoods of their households through the income generated from the project in the final end.

Expected Outcome

Through this project, Women Empowerment Group aims at attaining the following outcome(s)

• An enlightened group of women on their rights
• Increased participation of positive living women in decision making.
• Increased confidence of women living positively to go for leadership position
• Improved living standards of positive living women and their households

Why AWDF should support this project/Justification

AWDF works towards the whole round empowerment of African woman on all spheres of socio-economic, political health rights and therefore AWDF should support this project because it seeks to contribute into supporting women who are faced with challenges, discrimination and stigma related to their social status of living positively. This project also seeks to empower women economically which is a great decentralization of AWDF’s support to grassroots women and further, the project will create awareness on the AWDF’s work and efforts to empower the African Woman.

Project area

This project was designed, developed and is set to be implemented in XXXXXX Sub-County in Baringo County and shall target mainly women living positively who were part of the AWDF’s 2XXX world AIDS day beneficiaries. The main occupancy of the project area is the XXXXXXXX people who are one of the indigenous people in Africa.

Expected direct beneficiaries

For this project; Women Empowerment Group aims at directly impacting of the lives of 20 positive living women and 10 other negatively living women and their households through decision making and leadership empowerment

Expected Indirect beneficiaries

Upon the resultant targeted outputs we are also targeting at indirectly impacting up to 150 persons living positively and additional 500 community members who will gain from using the bucks which will be breeding the dairy does to improve on the quality of their local breeds in Marigat Sub-County of Baringo County.

M&E strategy

To assess impact, WEG will administer beneficiary project contact point evaluations where beneficiaries shall be responding on 3 month basis. The data obtained for the evaluations shall then be analyzed shared with AWDF to inform of the project’s progress and the impact that will have been achieved.

To monitor on the projects progress, WEG will be making impromptu field and project site visits to monitor, make and submit progress reports to the donor on the impact, challenges and areas of improvements. Monitoring reports shall be made by the line project staff and shall be promptly shared and copies kept in records.