Storytelling Project

Transport Workers’ stories about vulnerability and stigma related to HIV/AIDS

Stigma and the resulting actual or feared discrimination associated with HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have proven to be the most difficult obstacles to effective HIV prevention and care programmes and create an ideal climate for its further growth. HIV related stigma arises mostly from fear and lack of awareness and knowledge about the disease and/or hostility and existing prejudices about the groups most affected by it. All these factors make vulnerable people even more vulnerable to HIV infection. Stigma prevents many people from negotiating safer sex, taking tests for HIV and other STIs, disclosing their status to their partners or seeking treatment. HIV positive people face even more stigma and discrimination, and in many cases there are severe violations of human rights, including the right to work.

This is why the ITF has turned to storytelling. Together with Narativ, an organization that facilitates storytelling, the ITF has conceptualized a multi-country storytelling programme. This programme will empower transport workers, who have great vulnerability to HIV, to speak out openly about the disease and be ready to take action on their own behalf, consciously altering structures of inequality, subordination and isolation.

The ITF believes storytelling can strengthen the collective voice of transport workers living with HIV/AIDS thereby building confidence and organisation to act upon stigmatisation and discrimination in the workplace and community. It can also raise awareness and knowledge about HIV/AIDS thereby encouraging transport workers to find out their status.

This report is based on the stories of transport workers, including HIV positive workers, told during a series of storytelling workshops in Mombasa, Kenya in early 2009.