Success Stories: Building Relationships to Raise Awareness in Ukraine
When Natalya Lukyanova accepted her position as country coordinator for the Academy for Educational Development's (AED) SMARTWork program in Ukraine in 2002, she knew that she and her SMARTWork colleagues faced a daunting challenge.
At that point, Ukraine had had a decade-old law that guaranteed access to prevention and medical services, and protected the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. However, few employers had implemented programs or policies around HIV/AIDS. Very few workers and employers alike even knew the law existed. Collaboration between stakeholders was strained or nonexistent.
The SMARTWork model, developed by AED, brings together national ministries, trade unions, and business managers around issues of HIV/AIDS, to form support for future policies and programs. The staff of SMARTWork Ukraine worked tirelessly and with "gentle persuasiveness," as one colleague described it, to involve key players in a forming advisory board. Even as the group was still forming, the project worked to heighten their understanding of HIV/AIDS. An especially meaningful activity was having people living with HIV/AIDS make a presentation. Putting a human face on the epidemic was a powerful experience for many stakeholders in attendance.
Helping people make the link between HIV/AIDS and social and healthcare problems was also critical. The epidemic in Ukraine is in infancy, but infection in people under 40 is rising. Left unchecked, AIDS could become the second highest cause of death in Ukraine among adults by 2007 with as many as 1.4 million people infected. The impact on the economy is potentially devastating, a strong economic case for workplace prevention and treatment programs. SMARTWork talked to businesses, particularly young businesses and entrepreneurs, in their own language, making the HIV/AIDS more tangible to those driving economic development at the ground level.
Finally, SMARTWork worked with the media to ensure that those charged with informing the public were knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS. SMARTWork provided a training workshop that informed industry journalists, reporters, and mass media executives about HIV/AIDS, its rise in Ukraine, and how workplace-based programs can be part of a solution to containing the spread of infection.
Thanks to the relationship building that was integrated into SMARTWork, groups that do not normally work together are now engaged. Awareness of Ukraine's HIV/AIDS problem has increased dramatically. Trade Unions and the government credit SMARTWork's training and technical assistance activities for improved HIV/AIDS workplace policies.
The improved collaboration at all levels in the Ukraine is a success story for the entire SMARTWork team, but many point out that Natalya and her staff have "shown an uncommon courage to tackle a very difficult issue in the Ukraine." Natalya herself prefers to focus on what the entire SMARTWork team, in Ukraine and at the home office in Washington, has accomplished. "Colleagues across Europe often comment [to me] that AED's work with SMARTWork in Ukraine can serve as an inspiration and model for other countries' HIV/AIDS workplace initiatives," she notes proudly. "That is a great success."