Philosophical Approach

The Global Working Group on Faith, SSDDIM and HIV utilizes faith values based on unconditional love, empathy, non-judgmental care, justice, hope, mission and leadership responsibility.

With this value foundation we aim to save, improve and transform lives in line with divine will. We plan for safer, healthier, more peaceful, more productive, more prosperous, and more fulfilling living for all. We envision and promote lives that are free from preventable and controllable infections and illnesses that threaten, reduce, take, and waste life.

Thus, our activities are to be undertaken and delivered with kindness, compassion, responsibility, consideration and respect for diversity in opinion, belief, practice and world view.

We are committed to practical action, advocacy,  training, and prayer to ensure the greatest level of accessibility to services, information, skills, and supportive environments. In this way we will be able to serve the  hitherto difficult–to–engage, hard-to-reach, and problematic-to-serve individuals and groups due to various human identity-differentiating characteristics like age, gender, culture, religious belief, political persuasion, world view, etc.

We believe that those individuals and population groups with a history of being stigmatized, shamed, rejected, abandoned, discriminated against, harassed and misunderstood find it very hard to access and utilize HIV prevention & AIDS care services that do not heighten their sense of self-worth, self-acceptance and self-esteem.

Therefore, we adopt a philosophical approach that seeks to help the most at-risk, most vulnerable, and most affected individuals, families, communities, and nations.  In doing so, we highlight, understand, and appreciate the differences between: 

• “Safe behaviors” and “Safe environments”
• “Refusing to change” and “failing to change”
• “Lawful,” “acceptable,” and “faithful,” behaviors vis-a-vis “safe behaviors”
• “Risky behaviors” versus “risky environments”;
• “Individual level responsibility for self protection and care” and “collective leadership responsibility” to create environments that make safe behaviors and practices known, easy to practice, popular and routine while making unsafe ones difficult to practice, unpopular and rare
• Individual behavior change and community/societal socio-cultural change

We strongly value multi-sectoral, multi-level and multi-dimensional interventions for SSDDIM reduction and SAVE multiplication.

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For more information on our philosophical approach and goal orientation, please see our Strategic Plan.