Last updated: 25 Oct 07
Strategies A-Z: Integral responses to AIDS

1. Integral approaches to AIDS
2. Dr Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics approach to AIDS

* Please send Matthew Kalman your further strategies, URLs etc to add to the site *

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1. Integral approaches to AIDS
“The Integral Framework is core to United Nations Development Programme’s global response to HIV/AIDS” says Barrett Brown, Co-Director of the Integral Sustainability Center at Ken Wilber’s Integral University.

Brown details how exactly the Integral framework is being used in his paper, ‘Use of the Integral Framework by The United Nations Development Programme In their Global Response to HIV/AIDS’.

From 2002 Monica Sharma – as Director of the HIV/AIDS group in the Bureau of Development Policy at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) headquarters – led a major rollout - 30 countries so far - of a leadership and community development program she developed, called "Leadership for Results" (‘A synergistic package for a comprehensive response to HIV/AIDS’).

“It is UNDP’s main response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. At the heart of this program is the Integral framework”, says Brown.

“UNDP professionals teach a workshop on the quadrants, and they use developmental levels for organizations and individuals. There is an intense focus on self-development of both UNDP practitioners and the participants in the programs.”

Monica Sharma writes: “We used the integral framework to map factors fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to see gaps in program responses”.

Barrett explains more of the UNDP approach: “Meetings start with 10 minutes of silent reflection. They simultaneously focus on working with people wherever they are developmentally, and tailoring HIV/AIDS programs to the local communities. They are passionate about developing the most comprehensive response possible, which gets at the underlying causes in cultures, attitudes, systems, and behaviors [ie the Wilber Quadrants]. They are taking this program to key leaders in 30+ countries, including those in the media, arts, private sector, civil society, and governance.”

Sharma was trained in the Integral Framework in the mid-90s by Paul van Schaik (of iSchaik Development Associates) – in an intensive 18-month Integral training program which his organisation delivered for UNICEF Dhaka. Paul’s work is spotlighted in Ken Wilbers book A Theory of Everything - An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality (pg 99-103).

The "Leadership for Results" programme also integrates other models and frameworks including Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, action learning, Appreciative Inquiry and the 5 Evolutionary Levels of Organisational Development of Likert and Emberling.

Barrett reports that the ‘Leadership for Results’ programme “has been so successful that there are numerous calls to use the same model to address all of the other Millennium Development Goals (poverty, child and maternal mortality, sustainable development, gender equality, etc.).”

The LDP Strategy Note reports that: “Since early 2002, the Leadership Development Programme has generated results in over 30 countries including Argentina, Barbados and St. Kitts, Botswana, Cambodia, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Eritrea, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Lesotho, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago and Ukraine.”

Other users of the Integral framework in the UN system include the senior UNICEF representative in Oman, June Kunugi, who, according to Brown: “uses the Integral framework to develop all assessments, advocacy programs, speeches, communication strategies and to identify the etiology of destructive behavior. She states that the Integral framework can ‘serve as the basis for a strategy to bring about social change [and] transformation.’”

Robertson Work, Principal Advisor in the Bureau of Decentralised Governance & Development at UNDP headquarters in New York, “is currently training UNDP leaders about decentralized governance in seven developing countries and three global locations. The program he has developed—called “Decentralising the Millennium Development Goals Through Innovative Leadership”—uses a blend of Ken Wilber’s Integral Framework and Jean Houston’s Social Artistry model. He feels that ‘use of the Integral framework will only grow. It’s the future of international development. We need to be doing development differently, where we bring in all the dimensions of being human.’”

UNICEF’s Regional Office for South Asia also uses the Integral framework to develop its regional Women's Right to Life and Health project and the framework was also used for staff development, reports Barrett.

Barrett also mentions that “a major component of UNICEF’s Safe Motherhood project in Bhutan is ‘whole site transformation’ which draws from the Integral framework.”

LINKS
The Use of an Integral Approach by UNDP's HIV/AIDS Group As Part of their Global Response to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic, Barrett Brown (PDF)
Leadership Development Programme Implementation Guide (PDF)
Leadership Development Programme Strategy Note, Monica Sharma,. Allan Henderson, Serra Reid, et al, UNDP, 2005 (PDF)
Trying to Be Integral in Practice (2004), Paul van Schaik
An Integral Response to HIV/AIDS: The “Leadership for Results” Story, Michael McElhenie (Integral Leadership Review)

"While the campaign to reduce HIV in Africa has tended to focus more on the medical aspects of the pandemic," Dr Beck explained in an interview with What is Englightenment? magazine, "it has all but ignored the cultural dynamics that have in large measure created it."

"The HIV pandemic in Africa is largely the result of sexual practices that are best understood in terms of the dynamics of underlying worldviews or what we call value systems—in this case, the female tribal system (or Purple value meme) and the male egocentric system (Red value-meme)."

"These ways of thinking are not specifically African and they're not specifically black; they're not about genetics or geography. They're value structures."

Women with the tribal (or Purple value meme) worldview active "want to give birth to numerous children as their form of social security, and therefore they continue to become pregnant and often contract AIDS from their husbands in the process," says Dr Beck.

"They know that many of their children will die, and yet they need their children to look after them in old age as their guarantee of survival".

Many of the men, on the other hand, are leaving the constraints of the tribal (Purple) worldview and awakening the egocentric, or Red value-meme) thinking.

These men “are driven by a deep need to prove their masculinity, and therefore having AIDS is seen as a sign of their prowess, reflecting the fact that they have probably slept with numerous women and are not using condoms.”

The 'virgin cure' superstition
Making the situation worse is a superstition that is “highly prevalent in both of these value systems.”

“There's a common belief, for example, that HIV can be cured if you have sex with a virgin—hence the ongoing prevalence of child, toddler, and baby rape in southern Africa,” says Dr Beck.

Worlds response to AIDS?
These cultural and values dynamics are firmly off the public agenda: “Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki and so many of the Europeans who have gone to Africa won't talk about these issues for fear of being called racist.”

The standard Lower Right quadrant (external systems) solution of shipping in more medicines is insufficient: “It's not enough to send medical cocktails, which in fact may only increase HIV if these cultural dynamics are not taken into consideration. Why? Because in the context of these value systems, the drugs are seen as an instant magical cure. And people think, "If I can get that magical cure, I can continue my behavior."

“So without the knowledge of culture, the understanding of these value systems or worldviews, the millions or billions of dollars we spend on this crisis won't address the real dynamics that are creating the pandemic in the first place.”

Not a single speech at the Durban international Aids conference, in 2000, mentioned these cultural dynamics, Dr Beck laments.

Motivating behaviour change
Messages that have been tried by Dr Beck in the context of South Africa are those that might work with 'Red'/egocentric values behaviour:
• “Keep the African blood pure”
• “Real men don't have sex without condoms”

He also talks about organising new rituals in villages/towns that involve a virgin, to encourage the people to keep the girls as virgins (rather than follow the current superstition that sex with a virgin will stop aids).

* Dr Don Beck is co-author of Spiral Dynamics: mastering values, leadership and change.

Copyright © 2007 Matthew Kalman