BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION

Srijansil Mahila Samuha (SMS) is a non-governmental organization of PLHA women and children. It was formed by and running by the PLHA women themselves. We all are living with HIV and creating the space in the society for own sake. Most of women infected with HIV are living single life after her husband’s death due to the different circumstances. Poverty, illiteracy and lack of proper knowledge on HIV/AIDS, treatment care and support lead them at the very high risk. HIV positive women faces double stigma of being positive and women. Society, friends and even families used to abandon them just because of their health status. Society has stereotypical image towards HIV positive women. They directly link positive women to sex work. As a result, they faced lots of discriminations. They were even discriminated and abandon by their husbands even though virus is transmitted by their husbands. After the death of husbands the situation is worst, they even can’t access to the property of their late husbands.

SMS is a group facing the same kind of problems at society. To combat the above mentioned issues at society, this group was formed and is working. All the boards and secretaries are well aware on it. At the same time, it has the wide range of network and coordination with the PLHA women and stakeholders. Many PLHA can openly share and express their felling to us. At the same time, we have proved our self in action too. In many national and local levels we have proved our strong participation and social involvement. It is the strength and power of SMS.

Why SMS Formed ?

We first met at Teku hospital (a hospital based in Kathmandu, Nepal) where the treatment of HIV and AIDS and other communicable diseases is done. This is the only place where the maximum treatment facility for HIV/AIDS is available in whole country. We as a group of women and being infected with HIV, we used to get support from the male members of the different support groups which were then actively involved in these kinds of services. The PLHA care givers of the support group’s especially male counterparts used to escort us to different departments of that hospital seeking for different kinds of services needed by the women PLHAs. Though we used to feel very happy for their services, being escorted by the men most of the times we could not share most of our inner feelings with them. This was the prime reason that we then felt the need to form the new women PLHA group where we could share our feelings and emotions as well as help each other which was our prime psycho-social need at that time. The another fact that in the locality in and around the Teku hospital being with the male help provides the community in and around used to perceive us in the way which we found not very empowering. These are two major reasons one that of forming a platform for sharing and another to work together for empowerment were the major reasons for the establishment of the group. In the year 2006, the group was informal and used to work as a loose network of individual working for each other. While by the end of the 2006 the loose group has started to know each other a lot. In February 2007, we felt the need to hire a space in order meet each other for this reason 7 of us (all PLHA women) gathered together from different places with similar kinds of socio economic background to form a group and we named “Srijansil Mahila Samuha” which is in English is “Creative Women group”.