Stepping Stones and Stepping Stones Plus

People with HIV can now live long, healthy and productive lives as long as they have timely access to medication when they need it, combined with care, love, respect and support. Stepping Stones and subsequently Stepping Stones Plus were manuals that grew out of a need to counter the prejudice and fear surrounding HIV, and to foster strong and mutually respectful relationships, free from violence and without sexually transmitted infections or unplanned pregnancies. Stepping Stones is recognized by WHO, UNAIDS, USAID and many others as one of the few global interventions to reduce intimate partner violence, now recognized as a key cause and consequence of HIV for women globally.

Now combined into a single manual and revised and updated, Stepping Stones and Stepping Stones Plus is a training package designed to help trainers and community members organize a workshop. The training is with young and older women and men, separately and together, to explore their social, sexual and psychological needs, to overcome their communication blocks, and to practise ways of enriching their relationships. The workshop sessions help individuals, peers and their communities move step by step to change behaviours and to build healthy relationships.

The manual and an optional DVD describe how to organize the workshop and run structured exercises involving role play and other participatory methods of group learning. Workshop sessions are held mostly in four separate peer groups, based on self-identified age and gender groupings, with some larger meetings.

The optional DVD consists of 15 short clips designed to provide participants with a springboard for discussion during the different sessions of the workshop.

Stepping Stones and Stepping Stones Plus is essential reading for social workers, community workers, health workers, NGO staff and people living with HIV working on HIV-related community programmes; also researchers and academics teaching and advising in this field.