Private sector partnerships won't "make or break the search for an HIV vaccine," according to a business panellist at a Tuesday evening community symposium.

But Levi Strauss representative Alan Christie said the value of his company's recent donation to AIDS research, one of many HIV/AIDS-related contributions since 1982, goes beyond the purely monetary.

"We're simply standing up and saying this issue is important, to encourage other companies to join in."

The multinational clothing manufacturer is one of 14 large companies that have joined forces to form the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS. The firms are supported by business-oriented associations in Brazil, India, South Africa, and the UK, and by a number of international bodies.

In the fight against HIV, Christie said, private firms have a responsibility to their employees as well as the larger community. However, many firms still haven't got the message about corporate social responsibility. "Those of us who 'get it' have to get on with it and act," Christie said.

Levi-Strauss is now producing an instructional video to help companies and NGOs set up anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns and partnerships. Much of the company's earlier HIV/AIDS work targeted youth, Christie notes, since "we're experts at talking to young people."

Trevor Sharp of Australia's Building Trades Drug and Alcohol Committee described the success of another kind of partnership: between construction workers and their unions, with funding from government and a local AIDS association. The Building Unions AIDS Programme is modelled on a long-running alcohol and drug programme.

Sharp cites unions as an ideal delivery channel for HIV-related services to construction workers. First, with the infrastructure already in place, "there's no need to reinvent the wheel." Second, unions have historically been interested in health and safety issues, so building HIV/AIDS into the agenda is an easy move. One of the programme's posters shows a cartoon-faced condom wearing a hard hat. The caption reads: "Get real, get safe!"

this story can also be found in The Bridge, the onsite print newspaper

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