The STREAM Network was formed out of a 4-day meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya, in the year2022,
hosted by Positive Young Women Voices and funded by UNAIDS. STREAM stands for Stepping Stones
Trainers Engaging with Activist Movements.
The workshop brought together feminist women’s rights activists who are all women living with HIV,
from Argentina, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, UK/Ireland and Zimbabwe; as well as
long-term Stepping Stones female and male practitioners from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and
Zimbabwe. The workshop comprised of participants with an age-range stretching from our mid-
twenties to our late seventies. Together we resolved to join our diverse experiences, knowledge,
skills and passions together to create the STREAM Network and a five-year global strategic plan was
developed.
The Network seek a common purpose - to uphold and maintain the SRHR of women and girls
especially in all our communities in the context of HIV, irrespective of our HIV status. We all
recognize that violence against women, and against children form a key part of children’s and
women’s vulnerability both to acquiring HIV and to living with HIV, across the life span.
In the year 2023, Positive Young Women Voices the host organization with the support of UNAIDS,
again virtually brought together the 7 countries to localize the global strategic plan into their
country’s context. The localization process would see to it that the countries within the network
move towards coming up with their own respective national priorities drawn from the bigger
strategic plan, making it easier for them to bring on board other stakeholders in a position to
support the outcomes of the plan, as well as create avenues for them to efficiently resource
mobilize towards program implementation. The network members aimed to hold a series of
online and physical in-country meetings to determine what the localization process would look
like for each of them.
Through these meetings, they would also identify the consultants they would bring on board to
assist in the development of both the Strategic Plan and the Case Studies/ Advocacy Briefs. To
continue pushing for the adoption or the continued implementation of Stepping Stones, the country
networks sought to develop and share their advocacy briefs/ case studies with the key stakeholders/
partners they felt would be of assistance to them as they strive to implement their in-country
strategic plans.
Click below to read from each country: