Who and When

On this web page you will find information about:

Who

	involving the whole community and creating an enabling environment
	recognising that we are all affected
	the importance of skilled (especially male) facilitators - and of involving HIV positive facilitators
	different groups of people with whom Stepping Stones workshops have been conducted
	different organisations that use Stepping Stones

When

	working with younger participants
	the importance of identifying good times for each peer group
	the importance of regular attendance
	the importance of on-going meetings beyond the initial programme

Introduction to WHO

The package is designed to enable women, men and young people of all ages to explore their social, sexual and psychological needs, to analyse the communication blocks they face, and to practise different ways of addressing their relationships. The workshop aims to enable individuals, their peers and their communities to change their behaviour - individually and together - through the "stepping stones" which the various sessions provide.

Planned originally for use in communities throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the package has now also been adapted for use elsewhere in Africa, Asia, Europe and further. It has been used successfully with groups of HIV positive people and with groups of people who are HIV-ve or who do not know their status. The whole package is based on a human-rights based approach, assuming that we all share certain challenges in our lives, which the package aims to help us address. It is designed for a team of skilled facilitators - ideally two male, two female - who work with groups in small-scale settings. Facilitators experienced in sexual and reproductive health, in gender training and in participatory non-formal learning approaches could use the material straightaway. Back to who contents list.

Involving the whole community and creating an enabling environment

Stepping Stones workshop facilitators invite the whole community, from the age of about 11 years up, to attend. These include the men and women, old and young, who work in the separate peer groups, and then in larger plenary sessions. (See HOW for more on this.) This helps community members to develop a greater social capital in relation to these issues than there may have been before across the community, and also can develop young people's own sense of connectedness, not only with their own family members but also with others in the community. Both these factors have been seen in schools-based studies in South Africa to contribute to young people's ability to change their behaviour. Our experience with Stepping Stones echoes this.

Recognising that we are all affected

Stepping Stones from the outset takes the standpoint that we are all affected by HIV, its causes and its consequences, and that therefore the only effective response to the virus is going to be a collective one. From the start the programme adopts a human rights based approach. It is careful not to distinguish between those who are infected and those who may not be and aims to break down the barriers between "us" and "them" which many HIV prevention programmes still inadvertently promote. A sizeable number of community members in many countries where Stepping Stones is used are already living with HIV or have relatives with HIV. People with HIV often feel isolated and stigmatised by such programmes, especially if they just concentrate on how not to get infected. It is highly important, therefore, to cultivate and nurture this inclusive approach to this work, so that everybody feels cared for, respected and valued by their community, no matter what their status may be.

Skilled facilitators
It is critical that the facilitators who are guiding these peer group members have been well-prepared and feel at home themselves with their own issues of sexual health and gender equity. A facilitator who says one thing in the workshop, who then goes home and beats his wife or shouts at her husband is clearly not going to be very effective. People who have trained as teachers or nurses have often been taught to stand up and lecture at pupils or patients at the front of a classroom, in a traditional chalk-and-talk fashion. They often find such facilitation skills terrifying enough in themselves, since they are no longer taking the role of the "experts": and the thought of then having to talk about sex and condoms with their clients is often just the end of the line!

In Uganda, however, at a Kampala teacher training college, they have introduced Stepping Stones as a part of the curriculum for the trainee teachers so that they have the chance through the programme to explore these issues for themselves on a personal level in their own lives, before they are ever expected to work with young people on these issues. Those teachers have then gone on to run Stepping Stones programmes not only with the school students themselves, but in the wider community also. They have also been able to make wider use of these facilitation skills in other parts of the school curriculum.

In Tanzania, another group has opted for a different route, deciding to train volunteers in their early twenties who come into the primary schools to facilitate Stepping Stones with the young people, instead of the more formally trained teachers. The young people relate to these volunteer facilitators well, often chatting to them informally after the sessions and looking on them as big brothers and sisters rather than as teachers. Skilled male facilitators are especially hard to find but very much needed. For more information about how to select good male facilitators, see the Stepping Stones adaptation guidelines and a report on the effects of Stepping Stones on men. Click here also to find the Stepping Stones training guidelines.

You can also do much to promote respect and support for HIV positive people and break down the barriers of fear and stigma by training and employing them as skilled workshop facilitators and trainers. This is an excellent way of tapping their personal insights and experiences as well as supporting them professionally. A workshop held at the Kampala International Conference for HIV positive people in October 2003 raised this possibility with 40 HIV positive older and younger women and men. The theme of the whole conference was "positive leadership". All of the 40 who attended the Stepping Stones workshop session fully endorsed the training, employment and involvement of HIV positive people in this way.

Different groups of people with whom Stepping Stones workshops have been conducted

Stepping Stones was designed originally for use with people in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. However the process is adaptable and has been widely used now in many different contexts.

So far we have heard of its use with the following groups:

People in urban communities (eg South Africa, the Philippines, India)

Primary school children (eg Tanzania) and their teachers (eg Malawi)

Secondary school children (eg Zambia, Malawi)

University students (eg the University of Namibia)

Soldiers (eg Uganda)

People in prison (including Zimbabwe, Morocco, India)

Students in teacher training colleges (eg Uganda)

Groups of people living with HIV (eg Zimbabwe, Zambia)

Christians (Catholics and Protestants), Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus (many countries)

People of other beliefs (many countries)

People recovering from disasters or emergencies, using Stepping Stones to help themselves reconstruct their communities (eg Mozambique, Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone)

People as young as 10 years old (eg Uganda)

People with disabilities (eg Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe)

If you have heard of other people with whom the package has been used, or would like to hear more about its use with the people described above, please contact us.

Different organisations that use Stepping Stones

Many international NGOs as well as national and local NGOs now run Stepping Stones workshops in communities. ActionAid is one organisation that has done much to promote the use of Stepping Stones in many of the countries where it works, supported the Strategies for Hope project in its original development of the material, and was publisher of the original manual.

There are also some key individuals who have done much to promote and support others' use of Stepping Stones. For example Gill Gordon now of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, has run training and adaptation workshops in many countries, and also wrote the training and adaptation guidelines.

Patience Maengamhuru, Stepping Stones Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa (fact@pci.co.zw), Lovemore Magwere and their colleagues have done much to promote Stepping Stones across the region.

Baron Oron has run many training programmes in Eastern Africa.

Brigitte Syamalevwe, who was herself HIV positive and a feminist theologian, led Stepping Stones workshops in Zambia and in neighbouring DRC. (Brigitte died in February 2003.)

ACORD, the Agency for Cooperation Research and Development, has been using Stepping Stones for some years with its partners in various countries in Africa, and has written a report about its adaptation and use in Tanzania. It is currently conducting a three-year action-research study which will monitor the effects of the workshop on diverse communities in Tanzania, Uganda and Angola.

However, Stepping Stones can pose huge challenges for some implementing organisations. It overturns conventional assumptions about "we know best", about hierarchies of knowledge and decision-making and about the appropriateness of Western bio-medical models of health education and health care. As people who have promoted Participatory Learning and Action (PLA/PRA) have discussed, "the policy environment and institutional culture within which PRAs are undertaken are important factors that influence, if not determine, the long term success, sustainability and replication of participatory processes." (Thompson et al 1996, PLA Notes 27). Stepping Stones is no exception. If you would like to read more about this, click here to go to the IDS Participation Group website.

If you would like to know if an organisation is already using Stepping Stones in your part of the world, please contact us.

If you are wanting to use Stepping Stones in Southern Africa, Patience Maengamhuru, Stepping Stones Regional Coordinator, would love to hear from you. Her details are FACT (Family AIDS caring Trust), PO Box 970, Mutare, Zimbabwe. Tel: +263 20 61648. Fax: +263 20 65281. E-mail: fact@pci.co.zw

If you are wanting to use Stepping Stones in Southern Africa, do contact Baron Oron.

Introduction to WHEN

When to run a Stepping Stones workshop can have a big influence on its effectiveness. It is often very helpful to conduct seasonal calendar exercises with different groups of community members beforehand, in order to find out from them which time of year may be least difficult for them to attend.

The ages of participants are considered below. The importance of ensuring that peer group meetings fit in with the commitments of members of each peer group separately is also discussed, rather than trying to get everyone to meet always at the same time. Regular attendance at meetings is seen to have its advantages. Finally it is explained that it is crucial for participants to continue with other exercises and activities in the community once they have finished the Stepping Stones workshops, in order to maintain the momentum of the changes they seek to make in their lives. Back to when contents list.

Working with younger participants
How young can Stepping Stones participants be? In schools in Tanzania and Uganda, children as young as Standard 5 primary are already in Stepping Stones workshops and parents there now want them to start in younger classes. This demand now seems to be echoed by parents in many countries. (See "Rehearsing for reality") Save the Children Fund UK is hoping to develop a version of Stepping Stones for under 10s in Southern Africa. If you are already doing this, please let us know how you are doing this, so that we may learn from you.

Identifying good times for each peer group
Next, a time needs to be found that fits in with the needs of individual peer groups. Therefore good times for older men to meet are likely to be very different to those for their wives or for young women or men. Similarly, teachers in schools are likely to need to meet at different times from pupils in their care. Even for young people during the school day, timing can be critical. In Tanzania, while the schools didn't feel they needed help with their health lessons, the religious education lessons were still free - so PASADA, the religious NGO concerned, offered to run these sessions. This is how they first began Stepping Stones in the schools there. Now it has spread to 42 primary schools and 15,000 children in the area.

The importance of regular attendance
We have found in communities that regular attendance is very important, so as to maintain the momentum of the sessions and not to lose their flow. Since participants are only invited to attend, we have to ensure that each session is interesting enough for them to want to return. This appears for the most part to have been successful. This is why it is important to make the sessions active and enjoyable as well as serious.

The importance of on-going meetings beyond the initial programme
Finally, we realise that no programme can effectively be expected to change people's life-long patterns of behaviour in a few weeks. The lessons of Stepping Stones and similar programmes need to be revisited and rehearsed at regular intervals throughout people's lives. That wheel of change needs to be oiled regularly, in order to keep turning and in order to sustain that forward progress up that rocky road. Without that regular oil, people will soon feel unsupported and will start sliding back into old patterns of behaviour.

Stepping Stones is part of the Strategies for Hope series

This web site kindly funded by the Exchange Programme

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© copyright Alice Welbourn 2002-8

thanks to Petra Röhr-Rouendaal for her illustrations

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