Coalition on Children Affected by AIDS

After the Bangkok conference in 2004, many people working in the area of children and HIV/AIDS were disappointed by the quantity and quality of the presentations related to children’s issues, and by how children were represented at the Conference. As a response, they formed the Coalition to advocate for children affected by HIV, with a specific aim to raise the profile of children’s issues at future International AIDS Conferences.

The first step that CCABA took was to familiarize themselves with the governance structure and with how the conference is planned. By the time the Coalition was operational, most of the planning committees for AIDS 2006 had been formed so they identified potential allies and contacted them. They wrote letters to the co-chairs and to all committees but decided to forego strident demands in favour of sharing  their vision and offering assistance to conference planners in identifying the best speakers and topics of interest.

CCABA also recognized that they needed to build the capacity of their constituency so they commissioned the development of theConference Abstract and Presentation Toolkit. The Toolkit would help people submit better written abstracts, and present quality papers and sessions. CCABA translated the Toolkit into a number of languages and workshopped it at regional conferences leading up to AIDS 2006. They also surveyed their members to see what topics were of most interest to people working in the field, and used these to come up with ideas for Non-Abstract Driven Sessions. Finally, they joined others to encourage the IAS to create roadmaps in the programme that highlighted specific issues like children.
 
In general, CCABA members feel they improved the visibility of children’s issues at AIDS2006 and they started work to plan their involvement in AIDS 2008 in Mexico City. They worked with researchers to analyse the scientific abstracts related to children at previous conferences and used this to argue for gretaer representation of their issues in the conference programme. They successfully lobbied for a high profile plenary speaker on Children and HIV in Mexico and greatly increased the number and quality of submissions to abstracts and other parts of the programme. Additionally, they held a large pre-conference satellite, and expanded their Children’s Networking Zone in the Global Village. 

CCABA is already planning for AIDS 2010 in Vienna. 

CCABA has made the Abstract and Presentation Toolkit available to  all constituencies and it is available in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.

“Find out who your allies are,” says project consultant and Toolkit author John Miller, “and give these people the tools they need to help you and your issue.”