Yesterday, a training “Gender equity and gender-sensitive services in the social work” for the leaders of the communities of the “Convictus Ukraine”, which was held within the PITCH project, was finished.

During the theoretical part of the training, the participants discussed the following issues: the “Gender-Sex” concept, the gender society, the gender equality principles, and the peculiarities of providing the gender-sensitive services to people who use drugs.

Participants of the training fulfilled the individual tasks with the great enthusiasm, worked in the groups and presented the work experience. The employees of the “Convictus Ukraine” discussed the gender roles, the gender stereotypes, and the gender discrimination, that is, everything that prevents civil society from effectively protecting the rights of vulnerable groups of the population.

– The gender approach in the activity of organization provides effective opportunities for more effective harm reduction. Familiarity with the gender-blind, the gender-neutral and the gender-sensitive programs and projects provides a tool for working with people who use drugs and contributes to improving the situation with the HIV / AIDS epidemic in Ukraine”, says Lilia Guk, a trainer with many years of experience. – We all need to understand that only an integrated approach to social work will reduce the gender inequality and provide new opportunities for improving the lives of vulnerable groups.

It should be noted that gender factors influence over the advance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine, as HIV and AIDS diseases are largely due to the nature of the gender relations, the level of the gender culture of men and women. There are various vulnerability factors for HIV for each sex, which in turn determines the different needs for the measures of prevention, care and support. For example, men are predominant among injecting drug users who remain the main risk group that causes the development of the epidemic in Ukraine, whereas the commercial sex workers are predominantly women, due to a complex set of the gender and biological factors.

The Partnership to Inspire, Transform and Connect HIV response (PITCH) helps people who are most affected by HIV to receive full and equal access to HIV and reproductive health services. The program strengthens the capacity of community organizations to support the rights of groups most affected by HIV, through active participation in advocacy, the collection of a solid evidence base and the development of meaningful policy decisions.