Speaking Positive
About this service
Please note, this service is not currently running.
As part of the Fast Track Cities HIV Self-Stigma Empowerment Project, we want to bring together a group of Latin American people living with HIV to explore and understand how HIV self-stigma can hold us back.
We will run a series of workshops in Spanish and Portuguese so that we can feel open and comfortable sharing our stories and experiences in our native language. We will work together to create a series of podcasts at the end of the programme that will help and inspire others to tackle their own sense of HIV self-stigma.
Who can use this service
The project is for Latin American people living with HIV who are also gay or bisexual men, women, or identify as trans or non-binary - or any combination of these.
Why people use this service
- I want to meet other people living with HIV from Latin American communities
- I want to better understand the causes of internalised or self HIV stigma
- I would like to understand more about HIV, what U=U/can't pass it on is and how to live well with HIV
- To work on my self-acceptance, self-esteem and my individual sense of power
- To develop my confidence in speaking about HIV, privately and publicly
- So I can be a role model for others living with HIV from Latin American communities
How we can help
- Meet others living with HIV
- Feel more confident about talking about HIV with peers and others
- Increase your understanding of the HIV self-stigma that might hold you back
- To have fun and get a positive sense of what living well with HIV is all about
- If you want to share your story with others and hear their story
- If you want to feel empowered about living with HIV and the future
Register to join our groups
If you want to join our groups, sign up here.
When you sign up we'll write back to you within 48 hours with an invite to talk to us more and hear more about our groups.
Email usMore than four decades into the HIV pandemic, the high level of stigma and discrimination faced by people living with HIV can still hold us back. This project will look at our own HIV self-stigma and how to move through it and beyond it
For those of us raised in Latin American communities, there are cultural and religious norms that might have held us back from being who we wanted to be. There is also a large degree of stigma surrounding sex, sexuality and gender identity, and HIV.
We believe by sharing our stories together, we will come up with solutions and create a climate where we can heal from the self-stigma we may experience in living with HIV. Understanding how stigma affects us, or how we've moved through this, and sharing with each other we hope that we will be able to heal and support each other. We can then help others with the same issues.
There are many people living in London from Latin American communities who live with HIV. We don't always hear our voices, and so we believe that in order to create change we need to share our stories to help and support ourselves and others.
How we make a difference
We want to build a group of people from Latin American communities that feel comfortable talking and sharing their stories about HIV. We want people to feel empowered and help each other move beyond HIV self-stigma. We want people to be able to then share those stories with others.
We are aiming to make an impact by having language-specific podcasts at the end of the project, that others from the Latin American community can listen to and learn from.
METRO and Naz are working in partnership with Numero de Serie, to design this project which will take place in Spanish and Portuguese. There are very few language-specific projects to help the community, and we are hoping this approach will build confidence and a sense of community solidarity.