Viva La France: My Reflections of the "Summit of Self Help Networks" to the International Arena

I returned to the U.S.  with a mature level of awareness, new connections, and newfound networks of friends in global spaces. That is to say, having arrived in Europe with a limited perspective concerning the importance and the significance of the profound impact international decisions have on local issues and how those decisions impact the  quality of life on all five continents.  We explored sovereign decisions that are denying many communities their right to fundamental existence and the right to pass those legacies and truths on to their next generations.  We looked at the denial of rights to dignity, safety and water; to dwell and to health care, economic growth & development.  

Even though I arrived with my head held high, deep inside I carried a feeling of heaviness and some skepticism.  What will it take to end AIDS?  Must I work my entire life to that end?  Does the US Positive Women’s Network have a role to play outside of the United States?  Would they be interested in CHAMP projects like Prevention Justice or UNSHACKLE?   What I got in touch with over the three days we spent together through the case studies, the materials, the participants, the presenters, and our sponsors was that if I were to hold my head just a little higher...that I would be able to see beyond the horizon and into trans global spaces, where a reservoir of resources lie, through alliances based on the values of fundamental human rights.

Trans Global Spaces is where we all can exercise our rights and our duties as civil citizens that reach out beyond all of our own borders. 

Take Home Message: Operating in these Trans-global spaces give us the potential benefit of increasing our own democratic spaces at home. Because the global is in the local and the local is in the global, and we all benefit when we are able to integrate the two on multi-level scales.

The Challenge: How do we do this without losing our own identities? That very strongly depends on how we identify ourselves in global spaces.  Through trans global networking we can focus on those areas where our causes intersect. We are able to draw collective power from one another through linkages that will benefit our own countries.  Each network identified that HIV has a definite presence in their movements and the intersection was poverty, scarcity of resources and gender inequities.

The Conclusion:  We all agreed that by working together to support the guiding principles of basic human rights, we can gain access to a wider audience (trans-scaling) that may result in a boomerang affect and create a way of gaining more local support upon our return to our own regions and provinces.   

The Objectives:  Using the analogy of a blazing forest fire that fails to consume every tree...because the trees are not touching. Through building up  a concrete set of connections, when a message of human injustice comes along our connected network we can all respond with a civil chorus of disapproval.  Mobilizing and gathering our networks at U.N. to discourage its support of sovereignty of governments and re-center its basic principles of the “We the People.” 

Strengthening the US Positive Women’s Network:  Through capacity building, move the more than 300,000 women living with HIV in the U.S. from being perceived as only beneficiaries of HIV services to being recognized and appreciated as experts who are capable of framing solutions through their experience of being the most impacted and at risk for HIV.  Through common threads intensifying our connections with their networks of women throughout the world living with HIV.

Bonjoir:   A departing agreement was that we would all relieve ourselves of blame, even as we may find ourselves fighting for the right to exist, living in scarcity, dwelling in slums, fighting for access to materials and being denied lakes abundant with fish; being Muslim Women who live under man made laws spawned in inequity....and those of us who have contracted HIV along the way.  We are relieved of blame and leave with the realization that our conditions are positive proof of our government’s narrow approaches to the guiding principles of basic human rights.   We find reprieve in Networking Tool Kits that contain a blue print for Prevention Justice and we find reinforcement on the launch pads of alliances.....  through global space networking.

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