By Aja Witt
As a part of her two-week tour across the United States, Kenyan women’s health and global fund advocate Maurine Murenga lectured about global issues surrounding HIV/AIDS at the University of Iowa on March 24.Murenga, working with RESULTS, a global activism organization, started a foundation in 2008 to address issues of HIV and TB among young women and adolescent girls in Kenya.
“The Lean On Me Foundation was started to support adolescent girls and young women living with HIV to access services in a human-rights space and manner,” Murenga said. “In a manner in which their rights are not violated and they are not stigmatized.”
The Lean On Me Foundation has since grown from six adolescent girls in 2008 to providing comprehensive care and support to more than 700 adolescent girls and young women in 2017.
Murenga, who has lived with HIV since the early 2000s, having contracted the virus at a young age, is hoping that through global activism she can begin to see an end to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Kenya and in many countries around the world.
“We need increased partnership for all of us; let’s make it an item of agenda in our lives,” Murenga said. “In my country we say, ‘If you are not infected, then you are affected,’ just because you know me.”
Amanda Beals, a global health advocate who works with RESULTS in Washington, D.C., and who travels with Murenga on her tour, said the purpose of their visit to Iowa City is to localize and bring awareness to global incidents of HIV/AIDS and how they affect all people.
“We wanted to come to Iowa City both because we have amazing advocates here and because we want everyone to know that these issues in health are also local,” Beals said. “We are all affected and play a role in education, health, and policy.”
Beals said RESULTS has advocates in every state across the country and frequently hosts advocacy training at universities and state committees. These training sessions are action focused and individuals “come and learn, and we ask [them] to take action.”
The organization’s target audience is Congress, Beals said, because “they are making decisions and policy that affects us worldwide. We want to build personal relationships with decision-makers to educate them for when they’re working on these policies.”
Lauren Jerew, a RESULTS fellow training in Washington, said she has learned a lot about advocacy, recently meeting with officials in Washington. Jerew admits that while Kenya is “far away, in terms of miles,” and access to health care in the United States and Kenya are very different, it is everyone’s responsibility to make a difference.
Murenga, together with RESULTS, is scheduled to continue her tour across the U.S. to New York, New Hampshire, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming before heading back to Kenya.