Reconciling individual costs with collective benefits: women organising against AIDS in Mansa

This chapter considers the factors that make community-based interventions around HIV/AIDS successful-what works, why and for whom? If gender relations are fundamental to the transmission of AIDS, the way collective activity addresses and impacts on them is critical. In this regard, the answer to the question, ‘what works’, applies not just to the sustainability of an initiative, but its capacity to confront gendered power in getting to the heart of the epidemic.