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Thank you Hans

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22 January, 2013At the end of 2012, Hans Schwass ended his involvement in the ICEM / IndustriALL HIV/AIDS project work.

Starting in 2007, Hans, who had been Assistant General Secretary of UNI in a previous life, worked as the global coordinator – and later global consultant – of this project for 6 years, ensuring the coordination between the different regions where the project operated, lobbying international institutions on the issues of HIV/AIDS and actively taking part in numerous HIV/AIDS activities around the world, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Through this work, ICEM, and later IndustriALL, aimed and aims to combine trade union work with the issue of HIV/AIDS. This is done through various activities including organizing voluntary counselling and testing campaigns and bringing in the issue of HIV/AIDS to collective bargaining, all this mostly in countries where trade unions are among the very few organisations that have the trust of workers and can convince them to get involved.

Though the bulk of his work was in Sub-Saharan Africa, Hans also assisted the ICEM in setting up smaller and larger additional HIV/AIDS projects in countries such as Jordan, Mongolia, India, Trinidad and Tobago and Colombia.

As the IndustriALL HIV/AIDS project is now concentrating fully on Sub-Saharan Africa, Hans ended his involvement. IndustriALL thanks him for the years of dedicated support and wishes him a wonderful time enjoying life.