Mark Wandyaka
Living Positive. Leading with Purpose.
I am Mark Wandyaka, a Ugandan HIV advocate, community leader, speaker and development practitioner whose work is shaped by both lived experience and years of working directly with communities affected by HIV/AIDS.
I was born with HIV.
For much of my life, HIV was something I had to understand personally before I could ever imagine speaking about it publicly. Over time, however, I began to realize that my experience could become more than a private story. It could become a tool for challenging stigma, encouraging others living with HIV and helping communities have more honest conversations about health, dignity and opportunity.
That realization eventually took me from simply living with HIV to working alongside others affected by it.
From Peer Educator to Community Leader
My journey in HIV advocacy began at grassroots level as a peer educator.
I worked directly with young people and communities, having the kinds of conversations that statistics and policy documents often struggle to capture: conversations about fear, stigma, treatment, disclosure, relationships, faith, hope and what it actually means to build a future while living with HIV.
Those experiences taught me something that continues to shape my work today: the people closest to a problem often understand dimensions of it that decision-makers can easily miss.
I later joined He Intends Victory, a Christian HIV/AIDS ministry, where I served as Youth Director in Uganda from 2021 to 2023. In that role, I worked with young people affected by HIV, helped strengthen support initiatives, participated in community sensitization and represented our work through outreach and advocacy.
In 2024, I was appointed Country Director for He Intends Victory Uganda.
Today, my responsibilities extend beyond advocacy. I help lead community programs, coordinate staff and volunteers, oversee program and financial accountability, engage stakeholders and help develop initiatives that respond to the realities facing people living with and affected by HIV.
My work has taken me beyond Uganda to countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, where I have had opportunities to engage communities, share experiences and learn how HIV, poverty, culture, faith and inequality intersect differently across African societies.
Beyond HIV
HIV is an important part of my story, but it is not the boundary of my work.
Years of working at community level have made me increasingly interested in a bigger question:
How do we build communities in which people have a genuine opportunity to thrive?
That question has expanded my work and thinking into community leadership, public policy, youth opportunity, socio-economic development and the role of faith in responding to social challenges.
I am particularly interested in the gap between policy and lived experience.
A policy may look excellent on paper while producing very different results in a village, household or support group. I believe better leadership requires listening to the people who experience our social problems firsthand and ensuring that their experiences help shape the decisions made about them.
This is also why I continue to study, write, speak and engage with issues beyond HIV.
Speaking & Advocacy
As a speaker, I bring together lived experience, grassroots community work and organizational leadership.
I speak about subjects including:
- HIV, stigma and living positively
- Community leadership and grassroots development
- Youth leadership and opportunity in Africa
- Faith and public health
- Lived experience and better policymaking
- Resilience, identity and purpose
My goal is not simply to inspire audiences.
I want people to think differently about the communities we serve, the assumptions we make about people living with HIV, and the relationship between leadership, policy and lived experience.
Whether I am speaking in a community gathering, church, conference, classroom or international forum, I want the conversation to lead somewhere: toward greater understanding, better leadership and practical change.
Where I Am Going
My ambition is to become one of Africa’s influential voices on HIV, community leadership and people-centred policy.
I want to contribute to conversations that move beyond speaking about communities and instead create space for communities to influence the decisions that affect their lives.
I also want my own journey to demonstrate something I deeply believe:
Our circumstances can shape us without defining the limits of who we can become.
I was born with HIV.
I became a peer educator.
I became a youth leader.
I became a Country Director.
And I am still becoming.
My story is not simply about living positively with HIV. It is about what can happen when lived experience becomes service, service becomes leadership, and leadership becomes a platform for change.
Mark Wandyaka
Speaker | HIV Advocate | Community Leader
Background
My whole journey has been supported by He Intends Victory, a Christian Ministry to those Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS. “He” in the statement means Jesus, and He Intends Victory for all those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. I joined the organisation as an orphan. The founder Mr. Bruce Sonnenberg and his dear wife, Joni have sponsored my life since I was thirteen. Upon my graduation in 2021 from Kyambogo University where I earned a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance, I was employed by the organisation. I continue to serve as the Country Director for Uganda.
Documentary Storytelling
Through my documentary journey Life, Together, I travel across African communities capturing the lived realities of individuals and families affected by HIV.
These stories are not about statistics.
They are about people.
