BUILDING SOCIAL CAPITAL

If you would like to list any upcoming events, to partici-pate in the free open conference calls, to share your IDEAS, to feature and article in the PROYECTO IDEAS

Newsletter or need more information; please, contact us.

When you turn off the television and talk with your friends or fam-ily, you create social capital. When you ask your neighbors for help and do the same for them, you’re creating social capital. By you reading this news-letter, you are creating social capital. Social capital is having a network of people and organizations you share information with, participating in community events, having a sense of solidarity and equality with other community members, trust and recipro-cal help and support. The concept of social capital also offers an opportunity to understand why some people have bet-

ter health than others. Caring for people and having people who care for you usually makes you feel good inside. Sharing those feel-ings of belonging with others has been shown to increase the health of not only the individual, but of the entire community. Next time you’re having dinner with your family or joining a project that includes people from all walks of life, appreciate that their health may depend on you and your health may depend on theirs. and beyond.

PROYECTO IDEAS team

Autumn 2008 THE NEWSLETTER

PPPROYECTOROYECTOROYECTO IDEAS IDEAS IDEAS IDEAS FOR A HEALTHIER COMMUNITY / IDEAS PARA UNA COMUNIDAD MÁS SANA

proyectoideas@jsi.com Autumn 2008 (303) 262-4300

INSIDE:

A Note from PROYECTO IDEAS..………..…..pg1 Upcoming Events……………………..…….………...pg1 Capacity Building Assistance (MT)..…pg2 IDEAS Toolkit (Midwest)………………………….….pg3 From the Community (UT)…..………..........pg4 Contact Us………………………………..…………………...pg4

UPCOMING EVENTS:

•Latino Institute - Missouri Oct. 9-10, 2008 (Kansas City, MO) National trainers come together to provide free technical assistance to agencies in the Midwest region.

•Open Conference Calls - Oct 14 @ noon mountain (888) 237-9331 x833809 (Health Disparities Among Latino/ Hispanic Populations)

•National Latino Awareness Day Oct 15, 2008

Free from PROYECTO IDEAS: - Cultural Competence & Awareness Training - Teaching Techniques & Facilitation Skills Training - Presentation on HIV prevention Interventions. - Adaptation of interventions - State’s HIV Epdemiological Profile

Presenters from the JSI Research and Train-ing Institute in Denver delivered a four-hour cultural competency workshop to members of the Montana HIV Community Planning Group (CPG) during the group’s February 2008 meeting. JSI Project Manager, Alexia Lentz, and Project Co-ordinator, Arman Lorz, con-ducted the training that fo-cused on diversity among ethnic cultures, cultural aware-ness and cultural competence. Diversity is the mosaic of people who bring a variety of back-grounds, styles, perspectives, val-ues, abilities and beliefs as assets to the groups and organizations to which they belong. Participants explored the stages of cultural awareness, which are blindness, sensitivity, compe-tence and proficiency. Blindness is unconscious un-awareness, sensitivity is being aware that one does-n’t know or understand our differences, compe-tence is being consciously aware, and proficiency is living and breathing diversity, being unconsciously aware. “Proficiency is hard to attain,” says Lentz. “Very few people reach that level of cultural aware-ness.” The group then discussed cultural compe-tence, which is the ability to interact effectively with people of different cultural backgrounds. Develop-ing cultural competence results in an ability to un-

derstand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures. To become more cultur-ally competent a system needs to value diversity, have capacity for cultural self-assessment, be con-scious of the dynamics that occur when cultures interact, institutionalize cultural knowledge, and adapt service delivery so that it reflects an under-

standing of the diversity be-tween and within cultures. As a result of the Cultural Competence train-ing, CPG member and HIV Prevention Contractor, Shel-ley Hayes, Executive Direc-tor of the Yellowstone AIDS Project, contacted JSI about bringing Facilitation Skills

training to Montana. The re-quest was formally requested from DPHHS through CDC’s Capacity Building Assistance (CBA) Request Information System (CRIS). Hayes hosted the train-ing in Billings, MT and invited staff from her agency as well as other HIV Prevention Contractors and those working in the HIV Prevention community around the state. This training did an exceptional job of teaching attendees the different facets of fa-cilitation and gaining buy-in in the process. It was well attended and well-received. The third resource that the Montana HIV Prevention Community has benefited from is the open invitation from JSI to participate in expert-led conference calls on Minority Health. Eight individu-als from Montana joined the June 17, 2008 call, “Online Outreach: Innovative Strategies in Conduct-ing Individual Level Counseling.” Hosted by JSI, and led by Dan Melton, PhD, MPA, PowerOn Team Leader, the call was an effective tool for sharing in-formation in our state where gathering people for training opportunities is costly, and requires driving great distances and being out of the office where many staff wear multiple hats. This has also been a benefit from the two previous on-site trainings pro-vided by JSI. They are an effective resource for ca-pacity building.

Sandy Sands HIV Prevention and Treatment Program Specialist

MT Department of Public Health & Human Services ssands@mt.gov

406-444-1604

“RECEIVING FREE CAPACITY BUILDING ASSISSTANCE”

HOW A HEALTH DEPARTMENT’S HIV PREVENTION PROGRAM COULD BENEFIT; MONTANA

proyectoideas@jsi.com Autumn 2008 (303) 262-4300

One of the biggest challenges faced by community-based organizations and health departments is the turn-over of em-ployees. Many times this challenge involves providing a comprehensive training to new staff on board and that process could take a long time. Proyecto Ideas of JSI Research & Training Institute has been providing free Capacity-Building Assistance (CBA) for several years to health departments and community-based organizations which offer HIV prevention programs for the Latino/Hispanic community in the Midwest area. JSI is very aware of this challenge and based on this concern and under contract with the CDC to provide technical assis-tance to these agencies; we have created a toolkit to help make the transition for new employees an easier and faster process. The Proyecto IDEAS HIV Prevention Tool-kit has been created in order to share information that could benefit your health department and/or your organization in implement-ing and improving HIV prevention services and other programs. We have collected a wide variety of tools related to effective imple-mentation and adaptation of HIV prevention interventions including the following tools:

•Establishing a needs assessment for your organization

•Identifying Key Informants within your tar-get population

•Understanding cultural competence and

awareness

•Selecting the most effective intervention available

•Accessing technical support to adapt and implement effective HIV prevention pro-grams

•Strengthening abilities and skill for teach-ing and facilitating groups

•Monitoring and evaluation of interven-tions, and more.

This toolkit is meant to help those agencies who want to have basic, up-dated and useful informa-tion handy in regards of HIV prevention efforts to share with current and fu-ture staff members as well as to provide more informa-tion on free services, train-ing, and technical assis-tance available to you or-ganization. While planning on im-plementing or if you are already implementing an HIV prevention program for Hispanic/Latino clients we assure you will find this tool-kit extremely helpful.

If one of the populations you serve is the Latino/Hispanic community and if you would like more information in regards the Proyecto IDEAS HIV Prevention Tool-kit or want to re-quest a free copy of the Tool-kit contact us at:

Arman Lorz Project Coordinator

alorz@jsi.com 303-262-4321

“NEW TOOL TO ENHANCE PREVENTION EFFORTS”

A TOOLKIT FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION TO MAKE YOUR JOB EASIER

proyectoideas@jsi.com Autumn 2008 (303) 262-4300

proyectoideas@jsi.com Autumn 2008 (303) 262-4300

I have seen many organizations working on HIV prevention in great need of getting to know the community; I think they need to be part of the community to understand the issues we face and our needs. I understand that working in the HIV field is a hard job that one person could not do alone. It involves organizing volunteers and events as well as selling the idea that the work is on behalf of the community. It is not easy to do community outreach and lots of advertising at all times. I have seen outreach workers go to the bar and try to talk to us when we want to dance, or when we are flirting with someone across the dance floor; it would be a better idea to approach us while we are waiting in line to get in and tell us what you have to offer that is going to benefit us. Many of us don’t want to talk about health issues at the

bar, but make it attractive to us; “free food” and “friends” will get

many of us to go to their programs. We need a buy-in, not buying people to

participate. They have to think as we think to know how to get us and to un-derstand that not all of us in the same population are the same. There are dif-ferent sub-cultures within our culture to

consider. If people from organizations immerse themselves in their target population lifestyles and cultures, then people will respond better. Some of us have the privilege of being bilingual and we could assist and become leaders in our communities, but there are few opportunities for us in that aspect. We need to create a change, but we need opportunities. We need agencies working together, one person to be the image of the organization and then cre-ate small teams of 2-3 people to accept the chal-lenge of approaching the community.

Michael Arcentales

Mariana Iurcovich has been working in the HIV/AIDS epidemic since 1988. She has held global and national policymaking positions at international organizations and has assisted in the implementation of health services and policies in HIV/AIDS with national and local governments. Mariana is a clinical psychologist from Argentina and serves as the Proyecto IDEAS Director with plenty of experience as a consultant in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, South East Asia and Oceania with organizations like WHO, UNI-

CEF, USAID, AUSAID, PAHO, FHI, SUM, and GTZ helping them with imple-mentation of counseling & testing services, monitor-ing and evaluating systems and developing official programs for the educa-tional system in HIV pre-vention (kindergarten, pri-mary and high schools).

FROM THE COMMUNITY PROYECTO IDEAS STAFF

JSI Denver Office Director——Debra Olesen

Senior Evaluator————–—--—Rodolfo Vega

Project Director———–-—Mariana Iurcovich

Evaluator Advisor———–-—Christine Duclos

Project Manager—————–——--Alexia Lentz

Project Coordinator————–——Arman Lorz

Project Associate————–——Ryan Burbach

proyectoideas@jsi.com Phone: 303-262-4300 Fax: 303-262-4395

Identification of organizational needs and resources Development of a tailored CBS plan Execution of the plan Assessing the intervention Sustaining the intervention

“FROM AND FOR THE COMMUNITY”

QUESTIONS, CONCERNS, AND INTERESTS FROM THE ONES WE SERVE

PROYECTO IDEAS is a program led by JSI Research and Training Institute (JSI) and funded by the CDC. Its goal is to assist community-based organizations and health departments in improving HIV prevention services for Latino/

Hispanic populations living in CO, IA, KS, MO, MT, ND, NE, SD, UT, and WY by providing ongoing capacity building assistance.