NAME: Liza Gota
REGION: Central
COURSE: HIV & AIDS Counselling
After going through the workshop on HIV/AIDS stigma in the Church, I was greatly educated and empowered. I organized trainings at congregational levels with an objective of demytifying stigma in the church and especially among women. I encouraged them to talk about HIV/AIDS openly and even go for counselling and testing.
The culmination of of this was a Diocesan HIV/AIDS day for women that was combined with a thanksgiving day for the Mothers Union. On that particular day I had encouraged the people living with the virus to attend and with my committee we invited VCT group from Karira Hospital Mwea to assist in counselling and testing. After the function that involved a person living with HIV speaking to the women, we encouraged women to take HIV tests.
My success story is that, on that day, 189 women were tested and ten of them came to the open to declare their status which they had kept secret for years. This encouraged women and to me this is a great achievement. Thank you NCCK for your empowerment. I am a HIV/AIDS trainer and for years, I never realized how stigma was hurting the church and the christians in general. Until I attended the training, then I was motivated to use my skills.
