Mission
Sero centers leadership of people living with HIV (PLHIV) to end HIV criminalization, mass incarceration, racial and social injustice by supporting inclusive PLHIV networks to improve policy outcomes, advance human rights and promote healing justice.
What We Do
Sero is focused on ending inappropriate criminal prosecutions of PLHIV, including for non-disclosure of their HIV status, potential or perceived HIV exposure or HIV transmission and on building and supporting PLHIV networks.
Sero's HIV criminalization work includes raising public awareness through community education efforts and outreach to mobilize and advocate for reform in individual states, particularly those with HIV-specific statutes. By engaging and empowering those most directly affected to advocate on our own behalf and share our compelling personal stories, we help build a growing grassroots movement to mobilize the advocacy necessary to end HIV criminalization and promote a human rights-based approach to end the HIV epidemic.
Sero's Network Empowerment Project facilitates the creation and strengthening of PLHIV networks, including those that are oriented toward advocacy, education, treatment access, prevention, recreation or for social purposes. Through networks, PLHIV are able to define our own agenda, select and hold accountable leadership of our own choosing, speak with collective voices and improve policy and healthcare outcomes.
Sero produces the biennial HIV is Not a Crime National Training Academy that provides training, expert assistance and support to mobilize intersectional advocacy to end the criminalization of disenfranchised communities and build grassroots PLHIV networks.
Sero is also the host organization (in collaboration with many others) to raise awareness about the laws that criminalize people living with HIV, particularly when there is no actual transmission or intent to transmit, for HIV Is Not a Crime Awareness Day on February 28. The focus of this day advocates for ending HIV discrimination laws and was chosen to coincide with the end of Black History Month and the beginning of Women's History Month, in which advocates can use this HINAC Day Advocacy Toolkit to encourage people to learn about HIV criminalization, support efforts to reform these laws, and challenge stigma associated with HIV.
Sero is one of the founders of HIV Justice Worldwide, a global HIV criminalization resource and advocacy hub and through HJW and Latinx+ (a U.S.-based network of Latinx PLHIV), coordinates anti-criminalization efforts in Mexico and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Sero's work with incarcerated PLHIV produces Turn It Up! Staying Strong Inside, a magazine-format resource and wellness guide written, edited and illustrated mostly by people who are or have been incarcerated.
