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Trainers

To commemorate our 1 million copies, many people in different parts of the world have sent us their comments on how SFH materials have helped to inform and strengthen their HIV-related work at community level. Here is a selection from trainers.

 “The Stepping Stones training package includes many powerful tools to bring about  individual and community behaviour change, and to promote gender balance.  These materials were my introduction to community mobilisation methodologies that promote behaviour change by creating opportunities for community members to examine behavioural norms in small groups of the same age and gender, and then to share their findings in larger community meetings, where traditional taboos are set aside and people can talk freely across age and gender barriers.  When I witnessed the power of this methodology, I began to recommend it to colleagues in other countries. The Strategies for Hope materials for faith leaders and organisations are powerful and effective resources, which I hope more and more people will discover and use.”  (Deborah McSmith, trainer, Cambodia)

“After I read your books, Positive Voices and Making it Happen, I realized that the participation of HIV-positive people can have a great impact, especially with faith communities but also with the general public.  Your materials are helpful to open people’s eyes and to restore the light of hope to those who have lost it.”  (Dr Yudopuspito Trijoko, Department of Health, Salatiga, Indonesia)

“I have known and used Strategies for Hope materials from the first book in 1989 up to the present day.  Hundreds of them have passed through my hands on their way to users in Africa and dozens to interested people in Britain.  Copies are in the Departmental Library of an AIDS-orientated course for medical students at Cambridge University and also on the bookshelves of most of the African priests I’ve met in Zambia and Malawi, as well as in their Theological College libraries. I value and use SFH books and videos because they are practical rather than idealistic, clear, reliable, down-to-earth, and concerned with what has actually been done in real circumstances, rather than what could perhaps be done in an ideal world.

The Stepping Stones training package is remarkable for its paradigm-changing use of facilitated peer-group communication to break down the communication barriers that usually exist between different peer groups in African societies.  The method translates easily to communication barriers around sex and sexuality, successfully exploited in Time to Talk, the third in Strategies for Hope’s toolkit designed for use by churches leaders and their congregations.

I have been struck by the impact of the SFH video, What can I do?, in which Canon Gideon Byamugisha talks directly and effectively to any - and all - people to whom I’ve shown it.  I must have watched that video about 50 times, often two or three times in one day, as fresh visitors arrive in a rural priest’s living room, or gather round a screen run off solar power on his verandah at night (plus mosquitoes!).  Gideon’s message gets across whether or not the watchers are English speakers, and I remain fascinated, every time, even though I can quote most of the text from memory.”  (Rev Dr Anne Bayley, trainer, Hereford, U.K.)