Advocates for Youth intern Lylyana offers her reflections on the PATHWAY Act Intern Lobby Day on Monday, July 24.

As a 25 year-old female interning with Advocates for Youth, I have received many unrecognized privileges accessible to those of us in the United States and other developed countries. I have the ability to seek out education and resources that can protect me from HIV. I have learned the ability to negotiate during sexual encounters; much of which is not afforded to women and youth in developing nations. During my internship this summer, I have focused on international HIV/AIDS and how youth are affected. My passion has grown tremendously for this area. To hear that of the seventy-six percent of the young people infected in sub-Saharan Africa are girls can be disheartening. Yet I know that one person’s voice, story, and action can make a difference towards global HIV prevention.

I was one of fifty interns that embarked on Capitol Hill Monday morning to lobby for the Protection Against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth (PATHWAY) Act. The Intern Lobby Day brought together many energetic interns from NGOs, wanting to use their voice to bring light to the injustice occurring in developing countries regarding HIV prevention for women and youth. In particular, women and youth are vulnerable because of social, economic and gender inequalities in developing nations. The PATHWAY Act (H.R. 5674) seeks to eliminate the earmark within the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that requires thirty-three percent of HIV prevention spending to be used exclusively for abstinence-until-marriage programs.

As I sat amongst fellow interns, you could feel the sincere interest and passion felt for international HIV/AIDS advocacy. Equally felt was the ambiguity, as many of us had never lobbied before. At the conclusion of the preparatory morning session, we broke into our respective lobbying groups, which varied in size from a two to four person team, paired up with a staffer from one of the participating organizations. During lunch, teams were preparing their respective speeches and lobbying techniques and discussing their personal ties to the proposed legislation.

As women and girls are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, one particular story that stood out was an intern who had visited sub-Saharan Africa three times. During one of his visits, he was able to witness an educator giving a presentation to students in school, promoting abstinence-only. The intern was amazed by how the students were aware enough to ask about condom use. The questions arose that if one had to have sex and had no other choice, should they use a condom. The educator stood to his abstinence-only stance, and the students proceeded to ask “what if we absolutely had to have sex, what if we were in the field and had no other option than to have sex, could we use a condom then?” The educators’ message was, “No, condoms are ineffective and cannot be used, abstaining from sex is the only answer.” In a world where this may not be an option for women and youth, the abstinence-until-marriage message is not an effective message in prevention programming. With adolescent girls ages 15-24 in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean being up to six times more likely to be HIV infected than their same age male counterpart, programs that address women and youth’s susceptibility to the virus is essential in addressing the widespread pandemic. Getting this message across to our legislators was our ultimate goal for the day.

As I embarked on my first meeting with my Representative from the 45^th district in California, Congresswoman Mary Bono, I was prepared for opposition. Although, the meeting couldn’t have been longer than 7 minutes, I was pleased with my opportunity to tailor our message during the meeting. The meeting started off with the congresswoman’s staffer indicating her apprehension. She stated that she did not understand why we were there, as my representative supports abstinence. However, later in the meeting, the staffer also stated that Congresswoman Bono supports HIV/AIDS initiatives. During the meeting, I was struck by the staffer’s honesty; she stated although the Congresswoman is concerned with HIV/AIDS, she also doesn’t want to throw away money in countries that lack the infrastructure to carry out programming. Although, this comment was a bit shocking, it enabled me to tailor my message and answer her straight forward question. At the conclusion of the meeting, I felt charged and inspired to speak more about this piece of legislation and its ability to address the inequalities faced by women and youth in developing nations.

In approaching my second lobbying meeting, I was ready to convey my passion and speak from the heart regarding the PATHWAY Act. I was ready to face tough opposition, as I had in the first meeting. However, this meeting was nothing similar to the first. Rather, it was the complete opposite, in a positive manner; we walked away with the reassurance of gaining an additional co-sponsor.

I walked away with a sincere passion for international HIV/AIDS prevention for women and girls after a day of lobbying. I learned a lot from both meetings and felt as though I was able to gain a true insight to the political environment from the two dissimilar meetings. At the end of this experience, I look forward to continuing the work that began during this PATHWAY lobby day and to spreading the message to my fellow graduate students who are also interested in bridging the disparity gap between international and domestic prevention. I’ve learned from this experience that one person can make a difference by doing, others by telling, and some, by doing both.