What is the Right to Know project? A look at AIDS Calgary’s African Communities Project

In May 2010 AIDS Calgary Awareness Association launched an African Communities Project which has now been named by our advisory committee as the Right to Know project. The project came about after we conducted some research with the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Social Work. In partnership, we worked on and released our research entitled “Making communities stronger: Engaging African Communities in a Community response to HIV/AIDS in Calgary” http://www.aidscalgary.org/files/publications/Making%20Communities%20Stronger%20Final%20Report.pdf.

This research project was conducted in response to the growing number of African individuals settling in Calgary, and the significant increase in new HIV infections amongst those who individuals in Calgary who identified as African or Black. This research report made a number of recommendations on how to address these issues which AIDS Calgary committed to executing.

To ensure our commitment, we hired a Project Coordinator for the launch of Right to Know, and began working on our plans to facilitate those recommendations. Some of these recommendations the report included were addressing the service needs of African Communities through awareness, prevention and service provision, as well as addressing HIV/AIDS stigma within the local African communities and health care settings. We are aiming to meet these needs in partnership with other service providers.

Finally, we’re looking to find ways to appropriately engage our local African communities, by designing and delivering HIV services through the support of community leadership and outreach. To properly execute this specific task have had to address the language barriers that can sometimes be associated with newcomer communities by creating comprehensive literature, as well as ensure community and service providers are trained in cultural competency.

Although these may seem like pretty lofty goals, we’ve actually come a really long way. With the guidance of our Project Coordinator we have since seen many successes, such as:

• Forming a dynamic advisory committee made up of individuals from various local African communities and a few allies. This committee is involved in all aspects of our work including connecting us with this specific community, creating and delivering presentations among other important endeavours.

• From these initial connections through the advisory committee and our Project Coordinator, we have begun building partnerships with many different African communities in Calgary, and have attended events such as Afrikadey, Ethiopian soccer tournaments, Black Men’s conference, and churches, just to name a few.

• The Right to Know project has also built partnerships with many immigrant service organizations to educate front line staff on the basics of HIV/AIDS, testing, prevention, sexuality and support for people living with HIV.

• We have had the opportunity to speak on both Ethiopian TV and radio advertising the project and educating the community on HIV/AIDS.

• One of the project’s successes we are most proud of is we have trained 708 community members, service providers, and volunteers in our first year running the project.

As The Right to Know Project continues to gain momentum, we are really excited to continue working with the connections we’ve already made and the upcoming possibilities. One event that we are particularly looking forward to is a partnership with Afrikadey, where we will be co-presenting a film “Africa United” on August 9, 2011. We also encourage you to contact us if you have any ideas or if you’d like to become involved in the project.