He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune!

By Tyrone Hall, a Vienna Youth Force Youth Journalist and Graduate Student at Clark University, USA.

Suzette Moses-Burton, Head of CRN Plus, a Caribbean network led by people living with HIV, says the strings attached to funding are hampering a comprehensive and representative response in the Caribbean.

The activist says “funders have asked the organization to change its leadership for the purse strings to be released.” However, Mrs. Moses-Burton is defiant. She says “people living with HIV have the right to self-governance…giving up the right to self-governance will open up a Pandora’s Box.”
She says as far as CRN plus is concerned “there is not much to celebrate. This once vibrant organization of PLW-HIV lays an organizational shamble. Its members worn because of the inability to access funding from the regional organizational mechanism.”

The experience of CRN Plus offers many lessons to the global youth movement geared at amplifying the perspectives of young people about HIV and AIDS. The movement is in danger of being co-opted and must avert such a path to ensure its potency.