STREAM Network
Welcome to our STREAM Network. Please click on the relevant link below to read more
Our background and purpose // Our strategic plan // Our country pools // How to access Stepping Stones // Related documents and sites
Our background and purpose
The STREAM Network is a movement of women living with HIV, working together with men to advance our sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
We have linked with accredited trainers in the holistic, evidence-based Stepping Stones gender-transformative social norms change programmes to achieve our purpose.
The STREAM Network was formed out of a 4-day meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2022, hosted by Positive Young Women Voices and funded by UNAIDS. STREAM stands for Stepping Stones Trainers Engaging with Activist Movements.
The workshop brought together women living with HIV who are all feminist women’s rights activists, 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 seeks 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.
Our strategic plan
The STREAM Network Strategic Plan 2023 – 2027, created in our Nairobi workshop, highlights intergenerational solidarity and how it can be harnessed to end violence against
adolescent girls and young women in the context of our SRHR. Within our communities, we all recognise also how the vicious cycle of VAW and VAC are both causes as well as consequences of HIV.
These slow down, reduce - and often prevent - women's and children's realisation of their SRHR.
Click here to read our strategic plan
Our country pools
In the year 2023, Positive Young Women Voices – the STREAM host organization - with the support of UNAIDS, again virtually brought together the 7 countries to localize the global strategic
plan into each member’s 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. This was to make 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 also identified consultants to 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:
In early 2024, the STREAM Network expanded to welcome two new countries and networks, who are already familiar with using adapted versions of Stepping Stones:
How to access the Stepping Stones programme
To learn more about the
Stepping Stones training programmes to overcome violence against women and
against children and maintain and uphold their SRHR in the context of HIV, please visit the dedicated
Stepping Stones website
here. This site includes guidelines for adaptations of the programmes to suityour
own context, as well as FAQs about the programmes.
Your own copies of the two
Stepping Stones training programmes can be bought
here
Below are some further documents and sites relevant to our STREAM programme
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"We hear the thunder but we see no rain: Lessons learnt in efforts to promote community-led evidence-based initiatives to advance our SRHR” by Bajenja EK and Njenga LW on behalf of the STREAM Network.
Oral Presentation by Lucy Wanjiku of Positive Young Women Voices at the African Workshop on HIV and Women in Nairobi, Kenya, February 2024.
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Launch of the STREAM Network. Concluding Remarks by Lucy Wanjiku Njenga, Founding Director, PYWV. October 2022.
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Stepping Stones Newsletter for International Women’s Day 2023.
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Some Stepping Stones films and presentations: a selection of presentations and films which show how Stepping Stones works holistically across the genders, generations and HIV status to support girls,
women, boys and men in communities to work together to uphold their SRHR https://vimeo.com/showcase/11276020?share=copy
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The Stepping Stones website (https://steppingstonestorights.net). Our knowledge and understanding of how best to uphold our SRHR is constantly evolving and Stepping Stones trainers are constantly
modifying their methods to ensure they are uptodate with the latest evidence-based advances. This is especially important since so much has changed in the world of HIV over the years. This Stepping
Stones website contains Stepping Stones Adaptation Guidelines and Frequently Asked Questions about how to adapt the Stepping Stones programmes in a way which ensures that it is best suited to each
new context, while remaining aligned to the structure and principles of the original programme and up
to date with the latest scientific information. You can contact Stepping Stones accredited trainers in your own country / region through this site.
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UNAIDS ALIVHE Framework. This framework was designed to support those wishing to implement and evaluate responses to violence against women (and girls) and HIV in and with communities.
In our STREAM Strategic Plan, we have adapted the ALIVHE landscape theory of change, as well as the ALIVHE values and the gender change matrix.
- “Enhancing Social Norms Change Programs: An invitation to rethink “Scaling Up” from a feminist perspective." The CUSP Collective. 2021. This thoughtpiece by a collective of originators of
evidence-based gender-transformative social norms change programmes (including Stepping Stones), offers an alternative, ecological metaphor for scaling social norms change through women’s movements.
Our STREAM Network strategy builds on this metaphor.
