The challenge

In Atlanta, the largest city in the Southeast, African-American women represent more than 90 percent of all female H.I.V./AIDS cases. As Dázon Dixon Diallo told an NPR reporter in December 2003, African-American and other women are especially vulnerable to H.I.V./AIDS, which is exacerbated by poverty, homelessness, violence and racism: “Black women -- no matter what class, no matter what the education level (are) usually at the bottom of the worst of the statistics, whether that's H.I.V., S.T.D.s, infant mortality, maternal mortality, teen pregnancy; that is across the board,” she said. She was describing a multigenerational legacy of inadequate health care and health education that long predates H.I.V./AIDS. Today, even well-meaning public-health programs may lack the cultural understanding necessary for effective public education.

Seeds of commitment

While in college, Diallo began working with a women’s clinic in Atlanta as a lay health worker and saw the crucial need for more information about H.I.V./AIDS, specifically for women. In 1987, after graduation, she initiated the Women's AIDS Prevention Project (WAPP), a collaboration of local women's organizations. In 1989, working with WAPP’s women-of-color advisory board, she helped create SisterLove, a women's sexual-health and reproductive-rights group focused specifically on H.I.V./AIDS. “We modified the WAPP model so it had more cultural relevance to African-American women,” she says. Her work is influenced by the African-American legacy of progressive social change. She cites “the power and strength of women who have come before me and affected change in the face of adversity, risk, and peril.” She refers to her circle of colleagues as “sister warriors, family, and friends.” As a reflection of the deep spiritual roots of her leadership, Diallo's South African co-workers gave her the Zulu name Nomathemba, meaning “one who brings hope.”

Accomplishments

Focusing on the needs of women of African descent, SisterLove provides public education on H.I.V. prevention, transitional housing, and supportive services for those living with and affected by H.I.V./AIDS. As a community-based nonprofit, SisterLove provides services to women throughout the 20-county Atlanta metropolitan area. SisterLove's H.I.V./AIDS Prevention Project offers workshops on H.I.V./AIDS transmission and prevention, H.I.V. testing and counseling, a media campaign, and targeted outreach to those most at risk. Each year, SisterLove conducts hundreds of prevention-education workshops that reach thousands of people in the Atlanta area. Diallo creates forums for additional discussion about safe sex through a newsletter and her weekly radio show, “Sistas' Time,” broadcast locally on Atlanta’s community station, WRFB, and streamed live on the Internet at www.wrfg.org.

SisterLove’s innovative Healthy Love Party, an H.I.V./AIDS-prevention and reproductive health-education program, reaches thousands of people in Atlanta. Other organizations and health providers have adopted the concept nationally and internationally. "Healthy Love Party (is) a fixture at Spelman College and the Atlanta University Center," says Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a professor at Spelman and director of the Women’s Research & Resource Center. In addition, SisterLove’s Positive Women's Leadership Project (PWLP) develops low-income, H.I.V.-positive women of color as leaders and activists in the reproductive-health and rights movement. SisterLove also co-founded the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, a partnership of a dozen women-of-color organizations throughout the United States.

Diallo has a long history as an organizer of large, public-education events. In 1990, she convened Atlanta’s first conference on women and AIDS. In 2003, she hosted the National SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Conference, an event attended by 600 activists -- women from throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean. In 2004, she helped organize the Women, Girls and H.I.V./AIDS in Africa and the Africa Diaspora Conference, held at Spelman College.

Leadership style

Diallo founded SisterLove when she was just 24 years old. "I started SisterLove as an angry community activist whose only vision at the time was to provide programs and services, and I had no appropriate vision for forming an organization and running a 'business,' ” she recalls. As her leadership style matured, she began to “lead from behind,” as she puts it, which means encouraging and supporting self-empowerment by helping individuals meet their own needs. “My leadership style is an even mix of participative and delegative approaches. This means that at times I lead by completely involving employees or community partners … in the decision process, while maintaining the option to make the final decision, when necessary. At other times, the employees or community partners make the decisions free of my influence or control, often making decisions for which I am ultimately responsible.”

One defining characteristic of her leadership is her approach to collaboration, an organization strategy that she says is often interpreted too narrowly. “For example, a flaw of the early feminist movement, which was collaborative, was that it left out half the population – men,” she says. “We still see that happening, and this is one reason for the current backlash to feminism – why so many young women won’t even call themselves feminists. In truth, feminism is for everybody.” In 2002, Diallo designed and convened a three-day conference focused on male feminists, among them activists and scholars. This conference developed a training curriculum for men on women’s rights, which will be used to reach out to men, acknowledging their roles in women’s lives. “Convincing those who are only willing to give lip service to collaborative working relationships to support full participation and to risk vulnerability… is clearly one of Dázon’s more admirable talents,” says Spelman professor Guy-Sheftall.

The future

Diallo's goal is to remain a leader of SisterLove without the day-to-day administrative responsibilities. She hopes to write a book about SisterLove, to be used as a teaching tool. She also hopes to internationally syndicate her weekly program for African-American women, in addition to its current Internet reach. “I also want to slow down a little and build my own family,” she adds. “I want to be a mother. I have a lot of love left to shower and share, and my family is the most deserving of all that love.”

More about Dázon Dixon Diallo and SisterLove

“In Puerto Rico, health officials used a children's parade and the Head Start child-health program to get moms involved in the fight against dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease. Atlanta-based group SisterLove, Inc. recruited rural South African residents to teach each other how to stop the spread of H.I.V. Faced with limited educational resources abroad, CDC and other health officials often are forced to get creative when fighting diseases.”
- Women's Health Weekly, March 25, 2004

“Throughout my life I have been blessed to work with intellectuals, social scientists, feminists, community leaders, and social activists whom many know by name. While these impressive men and women have made, and continue to make, laudable contributions to our world, I am overcome with a feeling of assurance and pride when I think of the future our children will know as a result of the work being accomplished by women such as Dázon.”
- Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Anna J. Cooper Professor of English at Spelman College, and director of the Women’s Research & Resource Center