STEP-UP  2022/2023 Training and Networking Weekend – the Community of Practice Workshop

After a successful period of online courses, the STEP-UP 2022/2023 participants are finally meeting face-to-face for the Community of Practice Workshop and networking weekend in Porto, Portugal.

The STEP-UP programme is a year-long modular training programme designed to provide HIV education and personal development training to people who have an aspiration to become more active in the work of and for HIV communities in Europe and Central Asia. The aim of the programme is to equip a cohort of HIV ambassadors with the knowledge and skills they need to advocate for the best HIV practices.

STEP-UP is designed for people living with HIV/AIDS, health care providers, civil society representatives and other professionals who work in service delivery and/or advocacy to ensure universal access to combination prevention, HIV treatment and care.

EATG is partnering to implement its flagship project EATG STEP-UP MOOC 2022/2023 with the Alliance for Public Health (APH), a leading non-governmental professional organisation making a significant impact on the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, COVID-19, and other conditions in Ukraine, EECA and globally.

The new cycle of STEP-UP 2022/2023 is a bilingual (English and Russian) training programme that combines a self-paced e-learning approach with a face-to-face STEP-UP Community of Practice Workshop. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), the first of its kind on HIV, designed by activists for activists, free and accessible to everyone was launched on 4 April 2023. More than 180 participants have enrolled and followed the course so far.

The main activities of the STEP-UP 2022/2023 training cycle are:

• 1 MOOC in English and Russian;
• A limited number of small grants for follow-up projects or local trainings organised by STEP-UP trainees themselves (“train the trainer”);
• 1 Community of Practice Workshop (face-to-face).