Mbn hiv/aids evaluation final report Team of consultants

Table 19: Synthetic overview of contribution of CFAs to external mainstreaming processes

	Southern Africa (#10)	India (#5)
No specific support	4	3
Contribution of other donor	2	0
Some support through additional funding, workshops or research	4	2

It is an overall trend that these mainstreaming processes were mainly initiated by the organisations themselves (unlike the elaboration of workplace policies which was mainly donor driven). 6 out of 15 counterparts received some specific support from the CFAs who supported and enhanced an ongoing process. The support of the CFAs was very much appreciated in terms of additional funding or the flexible budget support and made the implementation of the HIV/AIDS-related activities possible. Participation in workshops on external mainstreaming improved the capacity of organisations to respond in an appropriate way to the changing context. In general, the CFAs through their flexible budget support are perceived as good donors, especially in time of HIV/AIDS. Organisations can better cope with the HIV/AIDS impact on their organisation in this way. Donors which give ear-marked funding for special activities make it much more difficult for civil society organisations to survive the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

No extensive HIV/AIDS analyses or thorough community research have been made (except Berdo, Novib) to design mainstreamed programmes. Organisations started to integrate HIV/AIDS activities into their core programme, based on the experiences of staff in their daily practice. Most of the organisations went through a strategic thinking and planning process leading to the integration of HIV/AIDS activities into their core programme.
Apparently counterparts predominantly intend to integrate HIV/AIDS activities into their programmes (external mainstreaming) before they have started to reflect on the internal impact of HIV/AIDS on their own organisations and their own lives (internal mainstreaming). This attitude has been seen in Southern Africa and seems to be replicated in India. Therefore the CFAs, like Novib, Hivos and ICCO started to organize, since 2003, workshops “HIV/AIDS and me” as they are convinced that acknowledgement of one’s own vulnerability to HIV/AIDS is a prerequisite for the implementation good HIV/AIDS prevention programmes. It would be interesting to explore this hypothesis further through other research or evaluations.
The nature of mainstreaming differs between Southern Africa and India, because of the stage of the epidemic. In Southern Africa HIV/AIDS-related activities integrated into the core programme addressed the whole spectrum from prevention to care, including facilitating access to VCT and home-based care, care for OVCs and impact mitigation. In India, the focus was very much on prevention, in particular on preventing HIV/AIDS crossing over to the general population (for more detailed information see the assessment of evaluation question 4).