Stepping Stones and Stepping Stones Plus : A training package on gender, generation, HIV, communication and relationship skills (2nd edition)

People with HIV can now live long, healthy and productive lives as long as they have timely access to medication when they need it, combined with care, love, respect and support.

Stepping Stones grew out of a need to counter the prejudice and fear surrounding HIV, and to foster strong and respectful relationships, free from violence and without sexually transmitted infections or unplanned pregnancies. Stepping Stones is a training package designed to help trainers and community members organize a workshop with young and older women and men, separately and together, to explore their social, sexual and psychological needs, to overcome their communication blocks, and to practise ways of enriching their relationships.

The workshop sessions help individuals, peers and their communities move step by step to change behaviours and to build healthy relationships. Stepping Stones consists of two manuals and an optional DVD, describing how to organize the workshop and run structured exercises involving role play and other participatory methods of group learning.

Workshop sessions are held mostly in four separate peer groups, based on self-identified age and gender groupings, with some larger meetings.

The optional DVD consists of 15 short clips designed to provide participants with a springboard for discussion during the different sessions of the workshop.

Stepping Stones is essential reading for social workers, community workers, health workers and NGO staff working on programmes for people with HIV; also researchers and academics teaching and advising in this field.

It is recognised by WHO, UNAIDS, USAID and many others as one of the few global interventions to reduce intimate partner violence, now recognised as a key cause and consequence of HIV for women globally.