Young Women Living with HIV/AIDS

Young Women Living with HIV/AIDS began in St. Petersburg, Russia 2003 with a group of eight women in a workshop. The women made a collection of face masks, painted them and used them to tell their stories about living with HIV/AIDS in St. Petersburg.  As a group these women used video, photography and creative writing to talk about their lives.  They recounted how they were discriminated against and about how they were forced to keep secret lives within their communities because of living with HIV/AIDS. 

In 2005, the Russian women’s project was presented to eight Kenyan women residing in the Kibera slums, Nairobi, Kenya. The Kenyan women responded with a collection of their own face masks, photo diaries and videos to be exchanged with their Russian counterparts. Their stories were told from a different perspective of living with HIV/AIDS. They discussed such issues as prostitution, poverty and their children, many of whom were also infected. In 2006, the project traveled to Kisumu, Kenya and was introduced to a group of women there.  The participants in Kisumu responded in turn with a video about their everyday struggles of surviving in rural communities and the streets of Kisumu.