The NWA recognizes the hard work and dedication of women and girls of color who strive to create social and political change. We also understand that this work often goes unnoticed or is under-appreciated. To this end, we have created the Pioneers Page as a way of highlighting extraordinary women and girls of color working in their communities and in various social justice movements.

To nominate someone or yourself as a Pioneer, please send us a 500 word statement highlighting the work of your nominee, along with your name and contact information. Please send to: generalinfo@nwaforchange.org

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NWA's First Pioneer

19 August, 2003
"HIV, Transformation, and Organizing"
Patricia Nalls, Founder & Executive Director of Women's Collective

Interviewed by Sydney Hoover
Co-written by Nishima Chudasama

Patricia Nalls – mother, woman, survivor of the HIV epidemic, and community organizer extraordinaire – is the Executive Director of The Women’s Collective, a D.C.-based community service organization created by and for women living with HIV/AIDS. At 29, Nalls lost her husband and youngest daughter, Tiffany, due to AIDS-related illness, and found out that she too was infected with HIV. Her story is remarkable, fused with personal anguish that became the impetus for great change.

Nalls began her work with women living with HIV/AIDS with a “secret phone line” in her home a few years after her husband passed away in 1987. “At the time,” she says, “I had an eight and four year old that I needed to take care of… I had a full-time job [and] couldn’t make my doctor’s appointments.” The strain of raising children, paying bills, and “getting things in place for death” made her feel the acute absence of a supportive community. When she finally went to a doctor she asked where she could find other women living with HIV. There was no such place in Nalls’s community at the time so she decided to make one.

“After a couple of years of [feeling isolated], I decided that I wanted to meet some people” Nalls says, recounting the process of putting flyers in her doctor’s office that simply said “If you are a woman living with HIV and would like to meet another woman, please call this number.” Calls began to come soon after the flyers were up and the phone line ready. One woman became a few and a few became many. “We became a small network of women who then began helping each other,” Nalls says. “We went to doctor’s appointments together so that when one got bad news somebody was there to pick her up.” T-cell counts could be devastating and tears were common expressions of the fear and trials that the women experienced.

Her impromptu support group continued in her home for a while and became a child care resource for the women when the only other alternative was foster care. In 1995, a friend suggested that Nalls incorporate her endeavor and her personal experience of other support groups convinced her that it was a necessary move. “The women [I knew] had gone through the services [and found them] inadequate,” she remembers. In 1997, Nalls recalls thinking “Okay, now what do I do? And decided [that] I needed to do something.”

Nalls’s decision to act translated into an application for funding from the Washington AIDS Foundation. “I got the [application] and a friend of mine and I sat up until about three or four in the morning just figuring out how we were going to write this! [We] went through it tooth and nail to build our story, my story, into the grant.” Compelling as they were, the stories got Nalls the grant especially since her perspective on the impact that AIDS has on women and their families proved to be innovative.

Now, five years later and 15 staff members strong, The Women’s Collective operates with an approach that is peer-based, family-centered, and woman-focused. “[Many] agencies are serving the person living with HIV but if you start talking about women you can’t do that because for her to get to the doctor’s appointment, you [have to] give her a token to get from point A to point B. I watch many women [with HIV/AIDS] sit in their homes and when food comes to them, they give it to their babies.” Nalls believes in an integrative perspective that is ultimately more beneficial to women and their communities.

Nalls’s work also focuses on preventing HIV and The Women’s Collective has a teen program to empower young women of color as they learn to take care of their health. “We hire 10 girls between the ages of 14 and 19 [who are] in public housing to educate other teen girls… before the girls go out, they have a really intense training [which is supported with] a continuation of training while they’re doing the work.” By fostering leadership in these girls, Nalls is helping young women of color participate in collective change. This is an especially important program in Washington D.C., which has the highest annual rate of new HIV infections and where people of color communities are disproportionately infected at a higher rate than the rest of the U.S. population.

The question that pushes Nalls to new frontiers in her work has always been “What can we do as a group to make the society and the environment safe for girls?” She says that “until we can figure that out, we [will] constantly have all of these issues [such as domestic violence and lack of access to information about reproductive health] that women are faced with. It’s a big issue and I don’t have an answer for it.” Nalls may not have an answer for the big question but she and the staff of the Women’s Collective are working towards it on a daily basis.

Quite appropriately, the motto of The Women’s Collective is “sharing our stories, saving our lives,” and indeed Nalls’s story and those of the people she works with – both in the office and those coming into the office for services – need to be told, remembered, and acknowledged. With these stories, and with adequate prevention and education, Nalls knows that HIV can be prevented. She believes that all people living with HIV/AIDS deserve and require adequate and holistic treatment.

Patricia Nalls is a truly amazing and inspiring woman whose ability to transform pain into action, epitomizes the ways in which people can take their lives and help other folks, including one’s self, to live well and to organize.