Is the Guidebook for You?

If you are a leader of a faith community, ask yourself two questions:

• Are HIV and AIDS significant issues for your faith community?
• Do people with HIV see your faith community as a place of hope and support?

If you answered "Yes" to the first question and "No" to the second, then the stigma of HIV and AIDS is a problem in your faith community. This guidebook provides practical guidance about how to overcome stigma and how to transform your faith community into a place of hope and support for people living with the disease.

If you answered "Yes" and "Yes", you might consider taking this guidebook's self-assessment to confirm your answer, and then keep doing what you are doing.

If you answered "No" to the first question, then ask whether HIV and AIDS are significant issues for the wider community of which your faith community is a part. If HIV and AIDS are significant issues in the wider community, then they are probably also significant issues within your faith community. If HIV and AIDS are not significant in the wider community, then be grateful. But before ignoring them, consider whether they might simply be hidden and not discussed openly. If so, then this guidebook may help you prevent HIV and AIDS from becoming bigger problems.

May you receive divine guidance and strength as you fight to end the stigma of HIV and AIDS.

Based on several years of working with pastors in southern Africa, EMPACT Africa has developed a guidebook for faith leaders, containing practical methods and guidance for ending the stigma of HIV and AIDS within faith communities.

The guidebook is currently available in eleven languages (Afrikaans, Chichewa, English, French, Korean, Portuguese, kiSwahili, Sesotho, Xitsonga, isiXhosa, isiZulu). If it would be helpful to you to have the guidebook available in other languages, please send an email to resources@empactafrica.org.

The guidebook is available in PDF format for downloading: