The Umoja HIV and Your Community Facilitator's Guide

The HIV and Your Community HIV Facilitator's Guide was added to the Umoja guides in 2011 (see Related Summaries, below). This resource seeks to "equip Umoja facilitators with basic information about HIV, as well as provide some simple tools for gathering and analysing information. It enables the facilitator to help churches and communities identify HIV-related issues, discuss them and think about the right response."

Umoja ("togetherness" in Swahili) is a programme to  help church leaders and their congregations work together with the community to bring about positive changes for the whole community by building on the resources and skills they already have. It is a process designed to inspire and equip local people with a vision for determining their own future with their own resources.

The document discusses stigma and discrimination and how it might impact the potential for people to choose healthy behaviours, for example testing and taking antiretroviral therapy. It suggests step-by-step discussions rooted in the Bible to bring congregations and communities to the point of seeking health information and adopting actions to prevent the spread of HIV, including: offering space for testing and counselling; offering a treatment buddies programme, analysing the effects of migration on the community; working with pregnant women and mothers to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV; and working with those who are ill and with the families of the dying, as well as orphans, especially around livelihood possibilities and needs.

The guide carries through with action planning, implementation, and evaluation steps and concludes with a list of resources.