Feliciano Reyna

Feliciano Reyna Ganteaume (Caracas Venezuela 02 December 1955) is creating a network of AIDS Community Service Centers in Venezuela–a country severely lacking in effective prevention and care–by drawing support from the most influential sectors of society. He began his college education as an architecture student at the Universidad Simón Bolívar and transferred to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1977. After graduation he remained in New York and became active in the gay community of the United States. It was there, in 1981, that he and his friends first began to hear about the new disease called AIDS. Later that year Feliciano returned to Venezuela to work for his father's company. When he returned to New York on vacation in 1982, he found that eight of his friends had already died from the virus.

In 1994 Feliciano's partner, Rafael, was diagnosed with AIDS. Following Rafael's death later that year, Feliciano began to research every aspect of AIDS and the worldwide epidemic. He was motivated to create an organization through which he could pass onto others the knowledge he had gained during the trips he had taken for Rafael's treatments in New York and Paris. Feliciano's father, who was living in the United States at the time, began to volunteer with AIDS organizations there. That work led to many of the contacts on which Feliciano built his organizations in Caracas and Miami. In 1995, along with the man who had been Rafael's nurse, Feliciano founded Acción Solidaria. During the next two years, Feliciano, then working as the general manager of a textile company, used his vacations to visit organizations and get more involved with the fight against AIDS. He invested all he earned to develop Acción Solidaria's infrastructure and, in 1997, resigned from his job to dedicate himself full-time to Acción Solidaria.

In October 1995, Feliciano founded Acción Solidaria on HIV/Aids, a non-profit Civil Society Organization, and since then has been its Executive President. Between 1998 and 2003, Feliciano acted as HIV/Aids Service Organizations Representative before the Technical Group on HIV/Aids of the United Nations Agencies in Venezuela.

Between June 2000 and December 2014, wrote the weekly column “Alerta VIH”, in the daily El Universal.

In 2000, Acción Solidaria became a member of Sinergia, Venezuelan Association of Civil Society Organizations, which presently groups 54 cross-sector organizations, from the areas of social development to human rights. Between 2005 and 2015, Feliciano acted as President of Sinergia´s Board, particularly strengthening the organizations international agenda in the promotion and defense of the space of civil society in Venezuela.

In 2002 was elected as a Fellow of Ashoka, global network of social entrepreneurs.

In 2003, together with other human rights advocates, Feliciano founded CODEVIDA, Coalition of Venezuelan organizations for the rights to health and to life, which defends the rights of people affected by chronic health conditions such as hemophilia, breast cancer, transplants, leukemia, lymphomas and HIV.

In 2006, Acción Solidaria received the first edition of the Red Ribbon Award, given by UNAIDS and other global institutions and governments, during the XVI International Aids Conference, in Toronto, Canada, as one of the best 25 community responses among 500 projects from over 100 countries.

Between 2009 and 2015, Feliciano served as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Center for not-for-profit Law (ICNL), and presently remains as a member its Advisory Board. 

Between 2010 and 2016, Feliciano has served on the Board of Directors of CIVICUS, Global Alliance for Citizen Participation.

In 2010, founded CIVILIS Human Rights, dedicated to monitoring and documenting the situation of human rights in Venezuela, from a comprehensive perspective, as well as to the promotion and defense of civil society rights, with an emphasis in freedom of association and assembly and the right to participation in public affairs.

In 2010, Feliciano received the second edition of the Human Rights Award, given every year by the Center for Peace and Human Rights of Venezuela´s Central University and the Canadian Embassy in Venezuela.

Since 2006, has participated in hearings of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, as well as in conferences related to civil society rights, including panels at the United Nations in Geneva, and global and regional consultations, with the Un special rapporteurs on Freedom of Association and Assembly, on Freedom of Expression and on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders.   

Acción Solidaria

Beginning with a pilot center in Caracas, Feliciano is building a network of AIDS Community Service Centers that offer all aspects of AIDS education, prevention, and care. The centers will bring people living with the virus into direct contact with those who are not infected, both to sensitize the public with respect to people with AIDS and to foster prevention through shared experiences. The pilot center will serve as a training facility for the development of regional centers that will alleviate the shortage of care providers in the interior of the country. As the program expands and centers are established in communities around the country, infected people will not have to travel to the capital to find the quality treatment they require. Through his organization–Acción Solidaria–Feliciano is also uniting, informing, and mobilizing key principals in the fight against the virus. His allies include representatives from private businesses, nongovernmental organizations working in AIDS and related issues, the academic community, doctors, and the Catholic Church.

Through Acción Solidaria ("Action for Solidarity"), Feliciano has developed a comprehensive model for AIDS Community Service Centers to offer both prevention services to the general public and care services to those already infected with the virus. The first center is already operating as a pilot in Caracas, and Feliciano intends to develop five additional centers on a national scale. He is also coordinating efforts to make the magnitude of the crisis known and to promote collaboration between diverse sectors in Venezuela.

The pilot center is designing campaigns directed at the entire community affected by the AIDS epidemic, not just the most vulnerable and impressionable groups. One of the major objectives of Acción Solidaria's prevention strategy is to alleviate the bias toward HIV-positive people. The Community Service Center is open to all visitors and strives to integrate infected and uninfected people through workshops, arts and crafts, and neighborhood association meetings. To reach young people, Acción Solidaria offers lectures, roundtable discussions, and workshops to students between the ages of 10 and 25.

In addition to various prevention initiatives, the centers will also provide integral care services to people living with AIDS. The health care program offers a general orientation, including a course on the meaning of life with HIV, emotional and psychological support sessions, nutritional diagnosis, and consultations with medical specialists. The center's lab performs HIV testing for clients, protecting confidentiality and monitors the health of its AIDS patients. Medical consultations for infectious diseases, dermatology, gynecology/obstetrics, colo-proctology, and lung health care available at about 30 percent of the estimated private consultation cost. Moreover, 30 percent of the center's consultations are delivered free-of-charge to patients who cannot afford to pay. The team of 14 top doctors is paid half of the consultation fee, although some consult on a voluntary basis. The medical staff also includes nurses, two psychologists, and a psychiatrist.

Acción Solidaria is integrating a project to bring important AIDS treatment drugs to Venezuela from the United States through a Miami branch of the organization. This effort has helped Venezuelans with AIDS gain access to much-needed medicines and permits Acción Solidaria to import donated and less expensive medical equipment. Feliciano eventually plans to use the Miami branch as a way to spread his program to the United States.

Afterwards, Acción Solidaria expanded its range of action to enter the field of political promotion for the defense of human rights and, since 2016, included in its program, Humanitarian Action, the provision of high-cost medicines of all kinds, not only those prescribed to treat HIV or AIDS.

External links

• Podcast Interview with Feliciano Reyna Social Innovation Conversations, May 9, 2008
• Reyna en el más allá (Profile of Feliciano Reyna) - Hableconmigo.com
• http://abc.go.com/shows/nightline/episode-guide/2017-02/14-021417-Venezuela-Descent-Into-Chaos
• Acción Solidaria