WOFAK began by training 35 female community leaders to educate citizens (including youth groups) about HIV/AIDS. It also trains women to offer home-based care for those with HIV/AIDS and to train other women as caregivers, and to counsel people with HIV/AIDS. In addition to individual counseling, WOFAK also offers a support group that brings women living with HIV/AIDS together to share their experiences (including their fear and grief) and to offer mutual support. WOFAK provides psychosocial support for infected and affected children.

As a pressure group, WOFAK aims to decipher the specific needs of women living with HIV/AIDS, and then works to advocate for these women's right to have those needs met.A drop-in centre in Kayole serves women living with HIV/AIDS, and their dependents. Reproductive health services and alternative therapies for the relief of opportunistic infections are provided.

HIV/AIDS, Women, Youth, Children, Nutrition, Rights

Women in Kenya are particularly vulnerable to the effects of HIV/AIDS because:

The women who formed WOFAK came together to support one another through the rejection, stigmatisation, and discrimination they experienced as a result of being affected or infected by HIV/AIDS. Many of these women were widows burdened with the task of supporting their families alone. WOFAK challenges the conventional image of women with AIDS as helpless victims by encouraging women to see themselves as survivors capable of taking control of their own lives and those of their children. Membership since 1993 has reached 350 women.

In 1996, a branch of WOFAK was opened in Homa Bay Western Kenya to respond to the needs of women with in that region. The lessons learned in that rural setting inspired a programme in urban Nairobi. Twenty more women have been trained in education, counselling, and home-based care since the initial training sessions. The existing drop-in centre in Kayole, which was established in 1995, was also expanded to meet more clinical needs of those in the area through medication and medical advice. Information gleaned from medical visits was used to develop a health protocol/training manual.