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Positive Outcomes: HIV and Me
A Course in Leadership
Changes Many Lives
Patience’s story (as told to Janet Madsen)
“I was afraid, but now I’m encouraging other women to speak for themselves.”
Patience feels good about using her real name, although she readily admits she wouldn’t have been able to do so even a few months ago. She saw herself with “too much anger and fear,” yet now she’s become a Peer Support Volunteer for other members of Positive Women’s Network (PWN) as well as one of the founders of her own non-profit organization, African Canadian Positive Network of BC. It’s been quite a year.
It started in the fall of 2009, when Patience was encouraged by PWN support workers to attend the Positive Leadership Development Institute offered by Pacific AIDS Network and the Ontario AIDS Network. Led entirely by people living with HIV, the intensive weekend challenges participants to look at what leadership means not only in terms of community work, but in terms of their own lives. The group of women who attended the fall training recently offered their insights to other members at PWN.
All four women emphasized the benefits. As Kath (who has become one of the Institute’s facilitators) puts it, “It’s about becoming a leader to yourself.” All said their perspectives have changed around their own capabilities. “I’ve learned to give positive feedback without a ‘but’ in the sentence,” said Minneh, pointing out it’s made a big difference in relationships.
Five practices of leadership are used:
- modeling the way
- inspiring a shared vision
- challenging the process
- enabling others to act
- encouraging the heart
Participants were encouraged to move outside their comfort zones. Exploring self-awareness and communication skills encouraged dialogue instead of shutting it down. The weekend included a symbolic act of throwing into a fire the ideas or beliefs that participants felt were holding them back.
It certainly challenged Patience out of her usual quiet. A weekend of inner work can be transformative, and she found her voice: “I became strong in talking to other people and discovered I was not alone.” In talking with her these many months afterwards, she says she feels particularly strongly that new immigrants would benefit from the Institute, because “It’s important to grow in a new country.”
Patience credits the leadership training with inspiring her to take the Peer Support Training that PWN offered in the spring. “To live in isolation destroys your life,” she says. And while the leadership weekend helped her realize she wasn’t so alone, PWN’s Peer Support Training was perfectly timed, because “I needed it after Leadership Training!” Having hidden herself and her diagnosis and suffering as a result, “I realized I needed to help other people in the community.”
As well as becoming a Peer Support Volunteer for women with HIV, Patience and several others have started a non-profit for people of African descent living in the Lower Mainland, the African Canadian Positive Network of BC. She emphasizes that encouraging others to form and help community is another important element of leadership. “
“In Africa we don’t talk about loneliness and isolation, because we live multi-generationally,” Patience says. But HIV stigma is very much a problem. “Here, everyone [with HIV from African communities] is in hiding.” The goal for her group is to provide a safe, welcoming space for Africans. “We meet together so we can feel at home.”
Patience feels she’s learned a lot since the biggest shock of her life, her HIV diagnosis. And she has come a long way from anger and fear she left at the campfire. She feels “With HIV you can do what you want to.”
“I am what I am because of PWN,” she says, smiling as she talks about how the encouragement of support staff at PWN started such great changes in her life. Her decision to address the pain, isolation and fear she was living with has helped her to change not only her own life but those of others.
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Patience is one of a number of peer support volunteers available through PWN. Volunteers can provide support over the phone, in person, or via email. Contact any one of the support workers for details about connecting with a Peer Support Volunteer.
More information on the Positive Leadership Development Institute.