GIVING DIGEST | The Bold, Beautiful Fight Against HIV Stigma
Some gifts save lives. Others save dignity. Robinnah Babirye and Peace Nakato offer both.
Born with HIV, the twin sisters were once little girls hiding their medication in shame. Today, they are icons of resilience, using their lived experience to challenge stigma, rewrite narratives, and build a world where young people living with HIV no longer have to shrink to survive. Their advocacy is not just about visibility, it’s about vulnerability as power.
Backed by the Uganda Network of Young People Living with HIV and AIDS (UNYPA), Babirye and Nakato have turned silence into a movement. From community dialogues to walking runways in the Y+ Beauty Pageant, they embody a new kind of leadership, unapologetically authentic and deeply generative. Their voices speak not only for the 50,000 young Ugandans living with HIV, but for anyone who’s ever been made to feel invisible.
Their fight is about more than viral loads and treatment targets. It’s about reclaiming joy, visibility, and agency in a world that often prefers silence over truth. The real virus, they say, is stigma, and through love, mentorship, and storytelling, they’re leading the cure.
💊 To give your truth so openly, to say “I have HIV” and still choose to smile, dance, mentor, and rise, is a rare kind of giving. One that heals far beyond the self.
Source: Daily Monitor, May 15, 2025 – “The New Faces of HIV Activism” by Elvis Kyeyune Basudde