Sixteen years ago HIV was real. We were all committed. But now things have changed. This is mostly because funding for AIDS has dwindled. To what extent can civil society organisations make donors listen and recommit to funding the AIDS response? That was the observation made by Itumeleng Komanyane, manager of Sonke Gender Justice’s International Programmes and Networks unit, which co-ordinates the MenEngage Africa alliance work on gender justice across the Africa region. She was speaking during a lunch time panel discussion called “A candid conversation between donors and activists committed to social justice” at the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, on Monday, July 18th 2016.

The conversation was organised by the Ford Foundation and it aimed to answer the question: “How do power dynamics between international funders and local activists impact our ability to achieve social justice?”

A high school in the northern part of Nyanga, Zimbabwe, would not allow its female students to wear trousers. But within three months of the launch of Changing the River’s Flow, a youth-focused gender norms transformation project, this discriminatory policy was overturned – a small but important victory and evidence of the change occurring as a result of the SAfAIDS, Sonke Gender Justice and Embassy of Sweden project being implemented by Sonke’s International Programmes and Networks Unit, which manages the work of the MenEngage Africa alliance on gender justice.

During the project’s launch at a side event at the 21st International AIDS Conference, which was held in Durban from 18 – 22 July 2016, MenEngage Africa’s co-chairperson, Bafana Khumalo, stressed the importance of working with youth, particularly in a traditionally patriarchal society such as Zimbabwe, saying, “we need to look at the underpinnings of what drives the thinking of Zimbabwean society. We need to work with young people. Perhaps you may not be able to change traditional leaders and older people on their attitudes on LGBTQI communities – but you can look at those who are still to come.”

During the recent commemoration of the Rwanda genocide, MenEngage Africa held a workshop on the role of faith-based leaders in conflict and post-conflict settings. We asked some of the participants why it’s important to engage faith leaders in conflict settings.