Working with Men, Responding to AIDS

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance has produced this collection of thirteen case studies in an effort to help education and prevention programmes conduct work with men on HIV/AIDS issues. It presents experiences and lessons from a range of different projects (some supported by the Alliance and some not) that are working with men. By showcasing experiences and lessons from the field in the form of case studies, this collection hopes to offer inspiration, ideas, and models for working with men in different cultural environments.

The case studies describe not only HIV/AIDS projects that are working with men, but also other kinds of projects that address other issues and problems relating to men (for example, gender identity, sexuality, violence). The aim of including this range of case studies is to show that:

• HIV/AIDS is connected to many other issues in the lives of men, and it is possible to have an impact on the epidemic by working with men on these related issues.
• Different kinds of men face many different needs and problems - "in order to do effective HIV/AIDS work with such men, it will often be necessary to work on these needs and problems as well".
• HIV/AIDS projects that are currently working with men, or interested in working with men, can learn from the experiences of projects that have successfully worked with men on other issues and problems.

The case studies are based on information gathered from a questionnaire that was sent to the projects concerned and from written materials that were available. The final selection of case studies reflects not only the intention to showcase a range of innovative work but also the self-selection of projects that chose to respond to the questionnaire. Case studies from Latin America are not included in this collection, as the author felt that sufficient numbers of these are already represented in other publications (references to these publications are provided in the resources section at the end of this collection).

According to the publication, in most cases, there were little or no evaluation data available on the projects. "This collection, therefore, does not attempt to define best practice in relation to the work of these projects. Instead, the emphasis is on drawing lessons from such work that will stimulate thinking on different ways of working with men."

The case studies come from projects located in Bangladesh, Belarus, Botswana, Bulgaria, India, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa, and Zambia.