Build it: Blueprint

 
The Blueprint for Action on Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS is trying to build a better future, and will take that message to the seventeenth  International Conference on AIDS later this summer. The Blueprint for Action coalition first made waves at the 2006 International Conference on AIDS, when a gender specific report card was presented to the Canadian government. They’re going bigger and better this year.

 The report card assigns grades to government in a variety of areas that affect the health of women and girls: aboriginal women, legal and ethical issues, human rights concerns, research, treatment, and more. This year, the Blueprint group has partnered with Oxfam Canada, and will include report cards from other countries as well.

Blueprint was the brain child of a group of women in Canada as a lead up to the International Conference in 2006.  Why create it at all? Well, here at PWN we’re often asked why we have women-specific services, and doesn’t HIV as an illness affect women and men? It’s true that more men are living with HIV than women in Canada overall, but that isn’t true for all populations- in Aboriginal communities, for example, women represent almost half of new infections. Social and political climates that create and sustain power imbalances that put women at risk for HIV and other STIs need to be changed, and this is what Blueprint is trying to point out. Creating women-specific services that speak to women’s realities means women can get centred, strong, and improve their lives and health. That makes for a better country.

For more information, check out womensblueprint.org.

 - Janet

This was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Networking, News . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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