Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Lots of exciting things to update you on!
Swansea Bay are the latest region to sign the Paris Agreement, joining Cardiff & Vale, Newport and North Wales as part of the Fast Track Cymru coalition. Thank you to Bertrand Audoin from Fast Track Cities European office and all of the health boards, council members and staff, clinicians and community members who took time out of their schedules to participate.
We are also currently working towards signing with Cwm Taf Morgannwg. If you live and/or work in the local authority areas of Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf and want to be involved, please email Julie McDonald at juliemcdonald@wales.nhs.uk .
We are also looking to support work in Hywel Dda and Powys – if you’re interested in being part of a Fast Track in either of those areas, please mail fasttrackcities@hiv.wales. February is LGBT History Month and this year the theme was Medicine. Cardiff & Vale, Newport and Swansea Bay all hosted events and our members also contributed to other events across Wales.
On April 1st (no, this isn’t an early April Fool) Sarah Maslen who is currently responsible for supporting Swansea Bay will take over as Project Manager after a month of transition. We’d like to thank Lisa Power for starting FT Cymru up; she’s not going far and will remain a volunteer advisor in some form. We’ll be looking to fill Sarah’s current post in West Wales shortly.
We’re currently finalising next year’s work programme. We’ll still be working on testing and prevention but one of our biggest goals for 2024 is to support people living with HIV and allies who want to become HIV community champions and challenge stigma. We’ve got a range of plans which we’re consulting on with partner organisations and people with HIV – see below for some of these. There will be opportunities for involvement across the year, with offers of training and consultations.
Meetings are taking place between the Welsh Government, the Expert Patient Programme, Terrence Higgins Trust and ourselves to create opportunities for people wanting to run peer support programmes in Wales. Have you previously run or been involved in HIV peer support in Wales? We’d love to hear from you.
This summer we will again be attending Pride and other festival events across Wales and are always looking for volunteers to help staff our stalls and spread the message about the modern realities of HIV. If you have a local Pride you think we should be at please let us know and email advocacy@hiv.wales to help us out with it!
We’re planning a very exciting anti-stigma campaign upcoming on social media in May. Please fill in our survey HERE if you’d like to be part of shaping the campaign– we particularly welcome responses from people living with HIV, but ally voices are also welcome.
Once the campaign is designed we’d love it if you could amplify it by re-tweeting, re-threading, sharing our Insta and Facebook, talking about HIV and helping to challenge stigma.
A quick reminder that we have supplies of free leaflets and badges – if there is an event that you think would benefit from these, please do let us know at advocacy@hiv.wales. Alternatively we have a PDF version of our HIV 101 leaflet on our website (link HERE) that you are welcome to print at your leisure.
And finally, we’re moving! On March 1st we say goodbye to our office on Greyfriars Road and hello to our new one on Mill Lane in Cardiff city centre. The new offices will have a training space and meeting rooms available as before.
Best wishes,
The Fast Track Cymru Team
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