Shaun Robinson New Zealand AIDS Foundation Executive Director Shaun Robinson has passed the six month mark in the role. We catch up with him on how he feels he has done so far and what he's focused on heading into the future. Shaun Robinson came into the job with three clear goals; the first was to settle the organisation down and improve its teamwork, while the second was to settle some of its external relationships down by improving communication and addressing concerns so the community was more supportive of the NZAF. The third is of course to ultimately bring the rate of infection down. Robinson tells us he believes he has made some inroads on his first two goals, and is determined to see the third come to fruition. Here is a part one of a series, Six Months In, which looks at Robinson's first two goals in particular. Making change in the workplace If you believe some accounts, the environment may not have been too rosy at the New Zealand AIDS Foundation when Robinson took the helm. He makes no bones about the fact that he picked up upon arrival that the Foundation had been through a pretty turbulent 12 months or so, with restructures and changes of focus, and the destabilising impact of a change at the top. "Also, in the time that I have been here I think that if you go right back though its 26 year history, there are inherent tensions in the NZAF. It began really as a support and care organisation and then pretty quickly moved into a rights, advocacy and prevention organisation. And there's always, throughout the 26 years, been a bit of a tension between those different activities and different priorities. And they tend to attract people with different skills and different mindsets. And so in a time of transition, those kinds of tensions tend to surface a bit more," Robinson points out. "Settling some of that stuff down was a key priority for me. Mainly because I think all the work is really good work. And I think all the people are really good people with their hearts in the right place. They're here because they care about the people that they're working with." Robinson says this means it hasn't been difficult to get staff refocused. A hui was called early into his tenure where he asked staff to identify why they work for the NZAF and share personal stories that led them to the job. "Very quickly people get passed what might be niggles of day to day work and start seeing that 'hey we're actually all playing for the same team'. So it's been a matter of trying to continue that spirit through the six months and do some pretty practical things," he says, citing weekly communications to keep all areas of the organisation in the loop with each other and aware of ways they can help each other, along with tactical meetings with a cross-section of staff every six weeks or so. "It's not just about us being happy. It's about us actually getting the best out of everything we do in order to do the work of combating the epidemic and supporting people who are affected by HIV." Robinson says any change in culture is a gradual process, but he believes it is working. He points out the Foundation is quite diverse; with a research unit that delves heavily into science, a Positive Health unit that takes a very individual and personal approach to people and Prevention teams thinking in terms of populations. He sees part of his role as showing staff the pieces all fit together and by keeping each other informed each other they can improve their work. "I think I've been able to gain the respect of all the staff. There have been times when some staff have said 'we don't like this and we'd like to do it differently' and I've said 'no sorry, you're just going to have to live with that one for the best interests of the organisation'. And I think a really good sign is that people have gone 'okay, we'll live with that and respect that you've listened to us'. So there is clear positive change there." The outside looking in Robinson believes the view of the NZAF in the gay community has improved, because some of the key work it's doing has built up momentum, most notably as the increasingly visible Get It On! campaign. He cites the Wellington Outgames as just one place where you couldn't be anywhere without seeing Get It On! paraphernalia. He believes that as Get It On! is rolled out through its different targeted stages, progress is being made addressing the sense of a division between the Foundation and gay men. "A lot of the early part has been focused on young people and catching young people's attention – for very good reason because we know under-30s have declining condom use, so it's very rational to focus there. "We've got into venues and venues are where a lot of the horny sexual active gay men are," he says, pointing to 11 gay venues up and down the country which are part of the community liaison programme. This means staff are being trained and given branded uniforms, and Get It On! felt is being laid on pool tables. "It's sort of becoming part of the milieu of venues," Robinson says of the campaign. "So it's much more of a partnership and less of a 'go stick a poster on your wall' sort of approach. "That's probably the difference between social marketing and the previous campaign approach, which was 'here's this six month's poster'. It's actually about how can we make the whole Get It On! message and image part of the venue. So I feel really good about the progress we've made there and, yeah, the feedback is pretty consistently positive." Robinson says when he first came onboard at the Foundation gay men approached him in places like K' Rd bar Caluzzi asking him why the messages from the NZAF are 'soft' instead of scary. He explains that Get It On! is about being pro-condoms and making them about the culture of being gay, by encouraging lots of good fun having sex, and making condoms part of that. He says in the past 2-3 months the feedback has becoming back a lot more positive, which he attributes to the NZAF communicating what it's doing much better. "People are saying 'oh I get it', Get It On! is a separate brand than NZAF'. And they're seeing the momentum that's building up with audiences that possibly would have had very little contact with NZAF – particularly youth audiences who don't have a traditional relationship with us. "I think as momentum builds up we're getting more and more feedback that people get it, both from organisations and individuals. There is more digging to do and the next phase is looking at sub-groups in gay culture and trying to get our head around their motivations." As for the NZAF's relationship with other organisations, Robinson doesn't believe it was ever as uniformly bad as some people may have thought. "Certainly when I first arrived a number of organisations like Rainbow Youth and OUTLine were quite positive. Even in areas where there had been contention. People like Positive Women said 'well actually we agree on far more than we disagree'. I think things have improved in that a lot in that area. We certainly don't hear the kind of visceral complaints we did six months ago when I first arrived," he says. "That may be a matter of people kind of waiting to see. But the experience I've had in six months is if people in the gay community are unhappy they don't usually wait very long before they say something about it." He believes the relationship with the National Collective of People Living with HIV has progressed, and the HIV Forum is getting back on track: "We've put a lot of energy into re-energising the HIV Forum, which brings together the clinicians and the community groups. That had really started to fall away, I think mainly because Government had lost energy around the HIV Strategy. So one of our tactics is to re-energise that forum in order to try and re-energise a national response around HIV and sexual health, which really, this Government has shown very little interest in. So that's required collaboration." More to follow Jacqui Stanford - 9th August 2011