About Us
The Dear Rosa Project is a legacy project dedicated to Rosa, an incredible, vibrant, amazing woman who lived at the intersection of HIV and domestic violence.
We use passages from letters Rosa wrote to herself–which she loved to share— and oral history practices to facilitate interviews with women living with HIV from all over the world. The interviews invite women to reflect on their own life experiences.
HOW WE WORK
The Dear Rosa Project is a growing community of over 200 women and we prioritize working as a community.
Roses and Thorns: We gather together as a virtual monthly group to build sisterhood. We invite Guest Facilitators to bring in a special skill or topic to share with the group. From a Grief and Bereavement Expert to learning body positivty through a Burlesque artist, we seek to create creative and safe spaces for women to connect. All who have completed their interview are welcome.
We are currently at work transforming the oral history transcripts of our Dear Rosa interviews into a play: But There Will Be Joy. The first showing is planned for December 2025.
Stay tuned for more information about our forthcoming Youth Program and Jewelry Line, Rose Gold
Creating safe spaces to share stories saves lives:
Black women are 18x more likely to have HIV/AIDS than white women.
75% of the time, women living with HIV/AIDS who have lived experiences of domestic violence (DV) die a trauma-related death.
And storytelling, which has proven to be one of the strongest antidotes to stigma, shame, and silence that continue to surround the intertwined epidemics of HIV/DV is often impossible for the women who live at its intersection: women have a 45% risk of being met with violence when disclosing their HIV status.