That's a good question and not an easy one to answer. When you were talking about that situation, I was reflecting on a former CIDA-funded program called the Southern African AIDS Training Program, or SAT, which was managed by the Canadian Public Health Association. It was dealing with the issue of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, which of course in the early 1990s, when it started, was almost a taboo topic. We were dealing with people who were both infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, and the question came up, how do we give them the voice, or how do we help them get the voice? For it's not we who should be out there advocating; it's they who should be advocating.
It came down to providing them with safe spaces and an opportunity to connect with other people who were feeling the same pressures and issues and giving them some protection. Actually, it ended up that the SAT office became the safe place for them, where they felt they could speak together. I don't know whether CSIH did this in the Balkans, but we also used the Canadian embassy as a safe space where people from the various Balkan countries that were at war with each other could come together to talk safely.
I think the concept of safe spaces needs to be looked at better: how we provide these safe spaces for people to talk, to come together, to look at who is dealing with the same issue and at what they can do about it. It's not an easy process and it's not something that's easily funded.
It goes back to your earlier comment. Organizational capacity-building is something that has fallen out of favour, and unfortunately we're now paying the price. We do not see investments in public health institutes in countries; we do not see investment in organizations. Organizations take time to create themselves and nurture themselves. Unfortunately, they're not things that ministers can clip nice ribbons on, and they extend over many years. It might take 10 to 12 years to build the organizational capacity and create a functioning public health institute in a country. Look at our own public health agency here—a fantastic group, but their budget is being cut every year. At some point, they're going to hit the wall. I think we have to understand that, if we're going to invest in organizations, we need long-term programs that do this and we need sustained input into it. Again, it's providing a space in which they can get together.
I got off-topic a little. It's one of my passions. I'm sorry.