Tingim Laip Project PNG
APMG is working in collaboration with Cardno Emerging Markets to manage Phase II of the Tingim Laip Project in Papua New Guinea. Tingim Laip is a project of the PNG National AIDS Council and is funded by AusAID.
Tingim Laip is PNG’s largest community-based HIV prevention and care project, and is focussed on environments of particular HIV risk and impact. These environments include industries that employ large numbers of seasonal workers or workers who live away from their family, the armed forces sites where soldiers live away from families or where families live away from their home communities, key transport routes and places where truck drivers and other transport workers and travellers meet, parts of towns where sex is exchanged for money, shelter and security.
APMG is the lead technical partner for the Tingim Laip Project and assists the national team by providing technical advice, managing the technical aspects of the contract relationship with AusAID and coordinating external technical assistance.
Tingim Laip works within the framework of the PNG National HIV Strategy 2011 – 2015 (NHS) and is a key project of the National AIDS Council.
Tingim Laip focuses on particular environments of HIV risk, vulnerability and impact, rather than on individuals. This approach:
- puts a higher priority on assisting communities to identify, understand and respond to the factors that contribute to the spread of HIV
- assists communities to build safer environments, rather than working primarily on individual behaviours
- acknowledges that an individual’s decision to avoid HIV transmission or acquisition, or to test for HIV and access treatment and care if HIV positive is not just an individual decision, but affected by a range of external forces
These factors can be cultural, social, economic and political. They might be related to:
- the power that the person is able to exert over their decisions;
- access to and quality of services and programs to support their decisions;
- drug and alcohol use;
- unemployment;
- domestic and gender-based violence;
- poverty and socio-economic pressures including unemployment; and,
- cultural and social norms.
Tingim Laip works with communities to identify the factors that support or hinder safe and healthy decision-making and assists communities to develop suitable solutions to address these factors.
Tingim Laip selects and prioritises sites or environments where HIV risk, vulnerability and impact are heightened. These include: work sites, industries and enterprises where workers live away from their village and family, urban settlements where sexual violence and alcohol use impact on risk, transport and migration hubs where sex is exchanged for money, food, shelter and security. Sites are characterised by mobility or the presence of large concentrations of men with disposable incomes, separated from their families and communities.
Site committees are established in each site and they lead the activities and ensure that all activities are sensitive to and appropriate to local culture and social situations. Where possible, people living with HIV are involved in all stages of activities. For Tingim Laip, a site is not a building, bar or market. It is an environment – so, a town, a mining camp, an oil palm plantation, and army base – and it includes a wide range of people, venues and agencies that can have an impact on HIV prevention, treatment and care.
