Building Partnerships, Empowering Girls: The GEMS Program as a Best Practice in Community Partnerships

With statistics indicating that 70% of all new cases of HIV among young people in the US are African Americans, reaching this vulnerable population in the communities where they live is paramount. While integrating HIV prevention education into existing youth programs sounds practical enough, establishing and maintaining successful partnerships with youth-serving agencies requires intense planning and engagement across the programmatic life course.

This presentation focuses on how the GEMS Program (Girls Empowered and Motivated to Succeed) applied Tuckman's organizational change theory as a guiding paradigm to manage community partnership development across critical phases, including “forming, storming, norming, and performing”. Strategically managing these partnerships has resulted in the GEMS program being institutionalized in youth-serving organizations in diverse settings. Since 2007, 15 successful partnerships have resulted in approximately 300 high risk girls between the ages of 9 and 18 receiving HIV prevention education over a 6 or 9-month implementation phase. Diverse community partnerships include the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, an alternative school for girls, and group homes for girls in child protective custody or in juvenile custody. Core elements of effective partnership development and maintenance that have been documented for replication include: (1) partnership agreements, (2) programmatic protocols, (3) parental buy-in, (4) population-friendly approaches, (5) physical space negotiation, (6) personnel and personality management, and (7) protective factors that complement positive youth development.

Comprehensive partnership engagement results in better access and opportunities to reach and retain young people in their own communities where sexual risk-taking occurs.