In September 2019, Global Action for Trans Equality (GATE) began a collaboration with Innovative Response Globally for Transgender Women and HIV (IRGT) to develop a community-focused guide to the 2016 publication Implementing Comprehensive HIV and STI Programmes for Transgender People (informally known as TRANSIT) after both organizations had received feedback from community members that the content of the original document was not accessible or easy to disseminate in local communities. The document, the TRANSIT Smart Guide, was completed in December 2019, and a subsequent workshop was organized to provide an opportunity for validation, community recommendations for improvement, and dissemination planning.
The workshop, held in Mexico City from 25-26 January 2020, brought together 17 trans leaders from 15 different countries. The event proved to be a successful collaboration between GATE and IRGT, providing the chance to validate the TRANSIT Smart Guide with community members and to identify opportunities for dissemination, implementation, knowledge exchange and, most importantly, collaboration between regions. The Smart Guide proved to be well accepted and validated by community members, with only minor suggestions for edits and revisions to increase its relevance in local communities.
