My last assignment was Malawi Africa, being the HIV / AIDS coordinator, one of the issue we really fought hard was the eradication of local harmful practices that helped escalates the pandemic, like the girl initiation and cleansing for widow/widower which both are sexual in nature.

We ensure that all traditional leaders both from the grassroots up to the district level are involved in the formulation of the District HIV/AIDS Policy, thus implementation is easy and supported by them as the authors.

One of the success we had was coming to the open by local leaders of their sero status and campaigning for the prevention of the pandemic.

Aside from the advocacy campaign, we do impact mitigation interventions by providing opportunity to the affected and inffected through microcredit program, skills enhancement program and education support for the school going children.

We believe that by involving them (leaders), giving skills and seed capital (affected and infected), providing education to school going kids would make a difference...a sustainable change in their lives...