Background

The Society for Women and AIDS in Kenya (SWAK) is a national women’s organisation affiliated to the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa (SWAA). SWAK was registered in August 1996 as a non-governmental organisation with its National Secretariat based in Nairobi with a mandate to preventing and mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS among women and girls in Kenya.

Founded in 1988, SWAA is a pioneer pan-African non-profit women’s organisation with its headquarters in Dakar, Senegal and covers thirty-nine national offices throughout Africa. SWAK is one of the thirty nine country chapters. The founders of SWAA believed that African women would ultimately be a major target of HIV/AIDS epidemic as a result of gender inequality, poverty and difficult social and cultural environment in which they live.

SWAA seeks to work towards achieving a world free of HIV/AIDS, where women and children are empowered to claim equal rights, access to health care, education and social economic opportunities. Its mission is to advocate on behalf of women, children and families in the fight against HIV/AIDS. It mobilises communities by strengthening capacity to prevent, control and mitigate the impact of the epidemic.

The National Societies affiliated to SWAA are semi-autonomous and develop programmes at the grassroots level where local NGOs, women groups and communities are involved in the design and implementation of projects. National societies are involved in the governance of SWAA through the General Assembly. At the technical level, national coordinators of SWAA country societies are in regular contact and communication with the SWAA Executive Office.

The National Societies of SWAA, of which SWAK is one, play an important role of operationalising SWAA objectives at individual country level. The SWAA objectives, as articulated in its constitution include:

• To sensitise, educate and raise the level of awareness of African Women especially rural women, in matters concerning HIV/AIDS related problems
• To undertake AIDS control activities that are acceptable to African Women based on their social-cultural background
• To examine, formulate and support HIV/AIDS control programmes for women in Africa
• To examine ways and means of working with, inter-alia, established women’s organisations, international institutions, national AIDS control programmes in their activities.

SWAK, as an affiliate of SWAA, was founded on the same principles and seeks to promote and operationalise both the vision and objectives of SWAA in Kenya. It operates as a membership organisation, with members working on a volunteer basis to implement its activities at the community level. Membership is open to women of all social-economic categories. Men participate as associate members. SWAK membership has grown over the last six years to over 8000.

SWAK has a lean national secretariat to provide leadership and technical support to the members at branch level. Support provided by the secretariat includes fundraising, programme management, monitoring and evaluation and liaising with donors. At the governance level, SWAK has an executive board at the national level providing strategic leadership. At the branch level, members have constituted management committees that oversee and implement SWAK strategies. The committees are supported by a project officer in each branch.

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Prevention of new infections: SWAK aims to reduce new infections among women and girls by addressing the underlying gender factors putting women and girls at risk

Improvement of the quality of life of people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS:
There are two important strategies for improving the quality of life of people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS: provision of treatment and care services and protection of their human rights.

Mitigation of the social impact of HIV/AIDS:
HIV/AIDS has profound negative impact on all aspects of the community. The capacity of communities to cope with the rapid increase of orphans and child-headed families is overstretched.

SWAK capacity development:
SWAK’s capacity gaps have been identified in the previous sections. SWAK has identified the specific capacity building initiatives that will be undertaken to address the challenges identified.