Download this as a pdf here

Our Vision

PWN-USA envisions a world where all self-identified women living with HIV (WLHIV)* can live long, healthy, and dignified lives, free from stigma and discrimination. Note: Positive Women’s Network – USA defines self-identified women living with HIV (WLHIV) as including women, people of trans experience, non-binary and gender-nonconforming people living with HIV who choose to be part of PWN’s membership body.
Download this as a pdf here

Who Are We?

We are a national multiracial membership body led by women living with HIV (WLHIV). Our mission is to prepare and involve women living with HIV, in all our diversity, in all levels of policy and decision-making.

What Do We Do?

* A glossary of the terms used in this strategic plan is here; terms in the glossary are also linked to the glossary below.

We will continue to build the power and leadership of WLHIV, with an emphasis on women of color, to change policy, practice and culture for the benefit of our communities. In addition to that, we have identified four strategic shifts we plan to implement in the next phase of our work to build on our successes, address our challenges, and meet the demands of the current political moment. To that end we will:

  1. Adopt a racial justice framework, being more explicit in our analysis about how race, HIV, and gender intersect, how structural racism and white supremacy continue to shape the epidemic, and our commitments as a racially just organization.
  2. Implement a membership engagement model. There are an estimated 270,000 women living with HIV in the United States today. PWN seeks to create a model that invites any and all of them in as members with clear opportunities for involvement and advocacy-related action, at any place along the spectrum of HIV status disclosure.
  3. Shift towards a power building and base building framework. This shift will allow us to organize a base beyond WLHIV, to advance a shared analysis of power, and to build a deep bench of leaders.
  4. Elevate our commitment to strategic electoral organizing through increased non-partisan civic engagement and with the addition of the 501(c)4 PWN Action Fund, which will allow us to support policies and political candidates committed to upholding the health, rights and dignity of PLHIV at the ballot box. 

We are confident that pivoting in these ways will allow us to maximize our impact over the next five years.

View PWN’s Theory of Change

Strategic Priorities

Over the next five years PWN will improve the lives of women living with HIV by:

  1. Developing and supporting leadership by women living with HIV, with an emphasis on Black and Latinx women and women of trans experience living with HIV;
  2. Advancing policies that increase healthcare access, rights and dignity for WLHIV and communities most affected by HIV;
  3. Strengthening the HIV field by expanding the racial and gender justice lens within the field;
  4. Mobilizing and supporting people living with and affected by HIV to be active in issue-based and electoral campaigns;
  5. Partnership with the PWN Action Fund, our associated 501(c)4 entity, to support candidates and issues aligned with our priorities;
  6. Deepening our shared analysis and practice around racial justice and gender justice, especially as they intersect;
  7. Ensure PWN policy and culture change work is permeating HIV media, policy priorities, and discourse; and
  8. Ensuring organizational sustainability and cohesion in a time of rapid growth.

Outcomes

As a result of our work, in the next five years we will see:

  • PWN’s work will reflect clear internal commitments to women of color and women of trans experience;
  • A large and growing cohort of Black, Latinx and trans women living with HIV with strong leadership skills for public and private activism and advocacy;
  • The national HIV policy field will increasingly use a racial and gender justice lens;
  • PWN will be able to effectively mobilize our base to action quickly on urgent issues and in relevant electoral campaigns;
  • An increase in the number of Congressional districts where we can consistently mobilize our base to take action;
  • Supportive policies will be passed and harmful ones will be blocked or repealed to ensure healthcare access, rights, and dignity for WLHIV and communities most affected by HIV;
  • Public officials supportive of the healthcare access, rights, and dignity of WLHIV will gain or maintain positions of power;
  • Issues and analysis important to WLHIV will be visibly represented in mainstream media, women’s media, and HIV media;
  • PWN will be a sustainable and adequately-resourced organization for the level of work we produce.

Principles

We are guided by these principles which connect our values to our actions.

Rights and Justice

We respect the right of communities to choose their own representation, to identify solutions that speak to their specific needs, to speak for themselves. We support and uplift their agency in carrying out their demands. We are led by WLHIV at all levels of our organization.

We create, advance, and support solutions that demand dignity and full human rights for communities most impacted by the epidemic, with a focus on people living with HIV, all women, people of color, LGBTQ persons, sex workers, people who use drugs, immigrants, and differently-abled people.

We advance proposals that seek to dismantle the effects of patriarchy and misogyny on women, including women of trans experience. We define a gender justice analysis as one which accounts for oppression and inequitable access based on gender in creating and proposing solutions.

We center solutions that advance racial equity*. We elevate analysis of white supremacy and anti-Blackness* as they intersect with the HIV epidemic and with leadership in the field. We seek to uplift leadership by women of color*, especially Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women, at all levels of our organization, and within the HIV field.

We work to dismantle systems that perpetuate economic insecurity and the inequitable distribution of resources for WLHIV and our communities. We support and innovate solutions that increase financial security opportunities for WLHIV.

We advance solutions deeply grounded in the rights of all WLHIV to control our own bodies, sexuality, and reproductive possibilities. We work to dismantle and disrupt systems of social and political control intended to constrain our sexuality, freedom of gender expression, freedom of labor, and right to self-determination.

Building Power

We work to cultivate a shared analysis of the many ways that patriarchy, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, shaming of sexuality and substance use, classism, and stigmatizing attitudes towards people living with HIV devastate and divide our communities, so that we can disrupt them.

Through our action, we work to undo the detrimental impact of proposed and current policies that reinforce power imbalances, especially those that prop up or perpetuate patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism.

Our proposals and solutions consider how communities are differentially impacted by issues based on an analysis of power. Our priority is to increase long-term, sustainable power for communities of color, low-income people, and women, including women of trans experience.

Within PWN, we allocate our resources in ways that align with our analysis of power as described above. We actively encourage this analysis and practice in the field and support partners and those we ally with to do the same.

Our decision-making processes center the voices, perspectives, expertise, and lived experiences of WLHIV, with a focus on communities that are most likely to be impacted by an issue. We invest in developing, nurturing and supporting leadership within communities disproportionately impacted by the HIV epidemic in the U.S.

We believe that increasing positional and political power of WLHIV in decision-making roles is key to our long-term success.

We allocate resources based on our assessment of where we can have the greatest impact and influence aligned with our values, mission, vision, and goals.

We recognize that that we are in shared struggle with many other movements. Therefore, we commit to be of service to, take leadership from, and respond to calls for support from allied communities across social justice movements. In turn, we actively invite others to support our vision, activities, and strategies to advance PWN’s goals.
See glossary of terms here