ADVANCING SRHR FOR ALL

A Human Library For Adolescents And Young People Living With HIV:

Religious leaders have been known to be against SRHR topics due to their Religious belief spaces reach more people compared to any other place as many Kenyans identify with a religion with a total of 85% of its population being christians, 9% muslims and 6% representing other religions.

AYARHEP saw an opportunity in engaging with religious leaders so as to reach more young people. In 2019, they conducted a session with religious leaders on advancing Sexual

Reproductive health and rights of adolescent and young people living with HIV. The session adopted one – on- one approach through a platform that allowed religious leaders to interact with adolescent and young people living with HIV in order to understand their SRHR needs. % of population in Kenya are:

85% Christians 9% Muslims 6%Other religions

To achieve the ultimate goal of mobilizing religious leaders to be champions of SRHR, AYARHEP conducted T.O.T’S training and further used a Human library concept to as an opportunity to have a young person living with HIV engage directly with a religious leader. The young people sharedtheir experiences on SRHR as YPLHIV with the leader through story telling models. This as well helped to clarify attitudes and myths about HIV.

The trained young people used different channels such as phone calls, SMS, Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp chat, video to deliver the Human library concept to religious leaders and their peers. This as well strengthened youth adult partnership among the young people and the adults in the organization.

The Human library concept although a pilot, was a success as it got support by the international network of religious leaders living with HIV Kenya chapter who are still interested in actualizing the concept among other religious leaders who are not living with HIV. Through the one – on – one engagement with AYARHEP many of the religious leaders realized that they were stigmatizing AYARHEP in their sermons and conditions governing their churches. Therefore some of the churches involved amended unprogressive laws that require mandatory HIV testing before weddings. In the past, those who tested HIV positive got denied a chance to wed in church.

I didn’t know that our structural procedures in church were discriminatory until my engagement with the young person, who shared about how church stigmatized AYPLHIV especially when we force couples to disclose HIV status to us before wedding. As the lead evangelist leading the department I shared with colleagues and we just advice couple to go for HIV test hence when they are comfortable with their HIV status we just wed them we have changed the forms not to include section on mandatory HIV testing. I hope to share with others religious leaders not to discriminate people living with HIV ’’.

Rev. Ann Ngina