Empowering Entrepreneurs
by Casey Halter
How an HIV intervention grew into a microenterprise.
When Vanessa Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1990, she did not come across a lot of stories of African Americans like herself living with the virus. “I knew there were other women out there, but they just wouldn’t come out,” she says. So Johnson worked to change that. Living in Albany, New As she worked in the field, Johnson observed that when women finally did come out to talk about their history, they didn’t talk about HIV specifically. Instead, she recalls, “when women told their stories, they talked about their childhood.
And just like me, they suffered a lot of trauma in the form of abuse. I thought about it intuitively and was like, ‘This is a common thread.’”
Thus, in 2007 she launched Common Threads, what is now a five-day, small-group training session that she offers around the country. It’s designed to help HIV-positive women connect the dots between their life experiences and their positive status and then to increase their willingness to tell their stories and disclose their status to their families, friends and communities. It’s storytelling as a means for disclosure, self-empowerment, HIV prevention and activism.
When an HIV-positive woman is faced with the stigma, shame, fear and misunderstanding of her diagnosis, one of the most difficult, yet most empowering things she can find is her own voice, says Johnson, who now lives in Washington, DC, and whose main job is consulting for AIDS services organizations including governmental agencies and faith-based groups through the Ribbon Consulting Group, which she founded.
Whenever possible, Johnson takes the Common Threads sessions, funded in the beginning by the U.S. Office on Women’s Health, on the road to budding activists living with the virus. Participants must be on HIV treatment and involved in an AIDS service organization, which usually helps fund the trainings. To date, more than 100 women across the United States have graduated from Johnson’s program, ranging from Washington, DC, and New York City to the states of Louisiana and South Carolina.
In 2012, funding ran out, leaving the program and its graduates, who also require money to support their travel and outreach, in dire straits. But the empowered women devised a way to help fund themselves and their healthy lifestyles: by launching microenterprises in which they make and sell jewelry and other wares. Today, teaching that business aspect is an integral part of the retreats.
Thus, in 2007 she launched Common Threads, what is now a five-day, small-group training session that she offers around the country. It’s designed to help HIV-positive women connect the dots between their life experiences and their positive status and then to increase their willingness to tell their stories and disclose their status to their families, friends and communities. It’s storytelling as a means for disclosure, self-empowerment, HIV prevention and activism.
When an HIV-positive woman is faced with the stigma, shame, fear and misunderstanding of her diagnosis, one of the most difficult, yet most empowering things she can find is her own voice, says Johnson, who now lives in Washington, DC, and whose main job is consulting for AIDS services organizations including governmental agencies and faith-based groups through the Ribbon Consulting Group, which she founded.
Whenever possible, Johnson takes the Common Threads sessions, funded in the beginning by the U.S. Office on Women’s Health, on the road to budding activists living with the virus. Participants must be on HIV treatment and involved in an AIDS service organization, which usually helps fund the trainings. To date, more than 100 women across the United States have graduated from Johnson’s program, ranging from Washington, DC, and New York City to the states of Louisiana and South Carolina.
In 2012, funding ran out, leaving the program and its graduates, who also require money to support their travel and outreach, in dire straits. But the empowered women devised a way to help fund themselves and their healthy lifestyles: by launching microenterprises in which they make and sell jewelry and other wares. Today, teaching that business aspect is an integral part of the retreats.
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