This World Café will explore HIV prevention. Discussions will focus on access, trust, stigma, digital spaces, and intersecting barriers. Participants will also examine gaps in care, transitions between systems, and what it means for youth to thrive. The sessions will identify missing perspectives in research and priority areas for change. Findings will help inform future research, programs, and policies through a policy brief we will create based on the inputs from participants.

Introduce the week's themes, identify missing voices, begin The Wall, and invite participants into the week's collective journey.

This one-hour interactive workshop introduces participants to the cultural significance of traditional Fijian Masi (tapa cloth) through storytelling (Talanoa) and hands-on Masi printing. Participants will explore themes of identity, inclusion, resilience, and community while creating both an individual design and contributing to a collaborative Collective Masi artwork. The session highlights how culture and creativity can strengthen connection, reduce stigma, and celebrate our shared humanity.

This session brings EGPAF President Doris Macharia and Uganda-based Community Advisor Ismail Harerimana to a shared stage to talk about why they do this work, what it will take to end pediatric AIDS, and how large organizations and communities can work together. The session will showcase how leaders at different levels are making an impact in the global HIV response and will have a Q/A portion for the audience.

Too often, Executives and Community Leaders are speaking in different rooms to different audiences. This session aims to break down those barriers.

Este espaço de acolhimento é uma vivência imersiva e segura, formatada exclusivamente para até 20 jovens (18 a 29 anos) vivendo com HIV/AIDS. Inspirada em metodologias de suporte entre pares, a atividade busca desmedicalizar a conversa sobre o HIV e focar na vida real.

A partir de um círculo horizontal de escuta, o tema central percorre os caminhos da afetividade, do namoro, das "ficadas" e da decisão de revelar ou não o diagnóstico no campo do desejo. Em paralelo, aborda-se a rotina da adesão ao tratamento antirretroviral — não sob a ótica da cobrança, mas do autocuidado, da rotina jovem, do manejo de efeitos colaterais e do impacto do conceito I= 0 (Indetectável = Zero transmissão) na autoimagem e na saúde mental. É um espaço de construção de redes de afeto, em que a troca de experiências entre iguais fortalece o pertencimento e combate o isolamento social.

The Panel Discussion will feature panelists that will help guide discussions on HIV prevention, youth living with HIV, barriers to care, intersectionality and priorities for research and systems change. It will be an interactive space where young leaders and more experienced researchers will exchange, network, and explore new creative research ideas for the future.

Challenge assumptions, encourage respectful debate, and spark discussion about the current HIV response. Debate HIV criminalization, disclosure, funding priorities, youth leadership, and who shapes HIV policy.

As the HIV response faces changing political and funding realities, this session explores what it will take to ensure young people remain at the centre of decision-making. Panellists will discuss meaningful youth engagement, integrated health approaches and the investments needed to strengthen youth-led responses for the future.

For generations, Somali gabay has been used to challenge injustice, resist oppression, preserve history, and hold leaders accountable. This workshop introduces participants to gabay as a powerful advocacy tool and invites them to use poetry to speak truth to power on issues affecting their communities today.

Young LGBTIQ+ people are navigating growing challenges, from shrinking civic space to increasing barriers to accessing HIV services. This session will explore how communities, donors and partners can work together to safeguard young leaders, strengthen community-led responses and protect progress in the HIV response.

Este painel tensiona o discurso oficial de "eliminação da transmissão vertical" ao dar visibilidade às trajetórias reais de mulheres que nasceram e cresceram vivendo com HIV. A partir de uma roda de conversa intergeracional com mulheres em diferentes fases da vida, o espaço debate o estigma social, os desafios no pré-natal e na saúde reprodutiva, a comunicação com profissionais de saúde e as perspectivas e medos sobre o envelhecimento com o vírus.

The Chemsex Peru Social Project was created as a community-based response to an underrecognized reality affecting people who use substances and, in many cases, people living with HIV. This session is intended for young people, researchers, activists, healthcare professionals, and community organizations interested in learning about innovative community-led interventions.

During the session, we will present the results of the project and the pilot study conducted last year, highlighting the key lessons learned, challenges encountered, and opportunities identified throughout its implementation. We will also discuss the social and public health implications of chemsex in the Peruvian context, as well as the initiatives our organization has undertaken to generate evidence, raise awareness, and strengthen the response to this issue through a human rights, harm reduction, and community engagement approach.

Este painel debate o papel central da informação científica atualizada — especialmente o conceito de I=0 (Indetectável = Zero transmissão) — como uma ferramenta libertadora de combate à sorofobia e à culpabilização. A partir da Educação Popular em Saúde, do uso de linguagens criativas e da mobilização comunitária entre pares (como nas redes de tuberculose e adesão), o debate aborda as dores e os desafios reais dos jovens ao revelar seu status sorológico, lidar com a saúde mental e construir estratégias coletivas de adesão contínua ao tratamento e quebra das cadeias de transmissão.

This World Café will explore youth living with HIV. Discussions will focus on access, trust, stigma, digital spaces, and intersecting barriers. Participants will also examine gaps in care, transitions between systems, and what it means for youth to thrive. The sessions will identify missing perspectives in research and priority areas for change. Findings will help inform future research, programs, and policies through a policy brief we will create based on the inputs from participants.

Reclaim lived experience as expertise and challenge traditional ideas of knowledge and credentials. Participants create portrait cards and/or short video statements.

Building on the launch of the U=U Youth Manifesto, this interactive workshop brings together the young leaders championing the movement to share practical advocacy tools, real-world experiences and strategies for action. Participants will explore how youth leadership can help expand awareness of U=U, tackle stigma and accelerate equitable access globally.

Drawing on the experiences of the READY+ programme, this interactive workshop explores how young people are responding to the interconnected challenges of HIV and climate change through community leadership, advocacy and peer support. Participants will exchange ideas and identify practical actions to strengthen climate resilience and create healthier, more supportive communities for young people living with and affected by HIV.

We piece together our own mosaic tiles using traditional Brazilian techniques, working side by side to build something collective out of individual fragments. A local HIV activist joins the session to share their story and ground the workshop in the realities of living with HIV in Brazil today. Each finished tile becomes part of a larger piece, a visual reminder that resistance and community are built the same way: piece by piece, together.

Este painel aborda a crise climática a partir do racismo ambiental, da justiça territorial e das determinantes sociais da saúde. Discute-se como os eventos climáticos extremos e a degradação dos territórios impactam a saúde do trabalhador, a subsistência e a qualidade de vida de populações vulnerabilizadas — como povos originários, comunidades ribeirinhas do Alto Solimões e jovens vivendo com HIV/AIDS (PVHA) em situações de vulnerabilidade social.

This Bridge Must Not Break: young survivor peer educators and the case for funding the people who carry HIV prevention

The session opens with a problem hiding in plain sight. In our study across 10 sites in Nigeria, 51% of survivor peer educators exited within two months. Only 32% stayed six months. These are mostly young people, carrying testing, treatment linkage, and violence disclosure for communities the formal system will not touch, including young trans people who have been removed from Nigeria's national HIV surveillance entirely.

We'll share what our peer educators told us about why they leave, then walk through the Protection and Power Package we built and piloted in our safe houses: fair pay, protection, psychosocial support, and decision space. We close with a concrete ask, making peer educator retention a tracked indicator in HIV programming, and open the floor.

The session is for young peer educators and advocates, programme implementers, and funders. It's relevant to Youth Force because peer educator burnout is a youth issue. The people the HIV response recruits, burns through, and replaces are overwhelmingly young. This session is about keeping them.

Format: 10-minute presentation plus discussion. Can be delivered in English or Nigerian Pidgin.

Participants co-design community-led HIV programs, research, policies, or interventions that centre lived experience and community leadership.

The Youth Innovation Showcase provides youth with an opportunity to share their research through creative, non-traditional formats that engage the public and make research more accessible. (We will also display abstracts that were not accepted at AIDS 2026 to give youth researchers to have a space to show the world the great work they’re doing!)

Reflect on the Denver Principles, intergenerational leadership, and the future of meaningful involvement of people living with HIV.

The session will showcase the experience of the Jóvenes en MoVIHmiento (2024–2025) program, a youth-led initiative that strengthened the leadership and advocacy capacities of 150 young people from Lima, Chiclayo, Cusco, and Iquitos, including young people living with HIV, LGBTIQ+ youth, and young people from Indigenous and other historically underserved communities.

The session will highlight innovative strategies to promote meaningful youth engagement in the HIV response, including advocacy efforts that contributed to the development of Peru’s new HIV legislation, collaboration with the Peruvian Congress and the Ministry of Health, and digital communication tools such as the use of digital avatars to promote combination HIV prevention and treatment adherence.

The session is designed for young activists, youth-led organizations, community networks, and anyone interested in strengthening youth leadership and policy advocacy. It is highly relevant to Youth Force because it demonstrates how young people can move beyond being beneficiaries of programs to becoming key decision-makers and advocates who shape public policy. The session will also provide an opportunity to exchange experiences, foster international partnerships, and strengthen youth-led, community-driven responses to HIV across different countries and regions.

We carve a personal seal, roll it through wet clay, and leave a mark that's ours to keep. Rooted in one of the oldest storytelling traditions in human history, the session moves through an icebreaker, a guided meditation, and hands-on carving, so no art or history background is needed. What we make is less about the ancient craft and more about what each of us needs to say, offering space to reflect on survival, resilience, and identity without ever requiring anyone to disclose their status.

Este painel debate como as construções sociais da masculinidade afetam a saúde integral, o autocuidado e o acesso a direitos de homens negros, jovens e da população LGBTQI+. Em uma sociedade marcada pelo racismo e pela LGBTfobia, a busca por uma masculinidade ideal/hegemônica muitas vezes afasta esses sujeitos do cuidado com a saúde e do apoio comunitário. O painel busca tensionar como o estigma do HIV incide sobre os corpos de jovens negros e como a vivência da transmissão vertical impõe desafios específicos na transição para a vida adulta, na afetividade e no direito à saúde plena.

Participants negotiate priorities, build consensus, and co-create the Youth Force Declaration for AIDS 2030.