Mbn hiv/aids evaluation final report Team of consultants

STOP AIDS NOW!

The decision of the CFAs and the AIDS fund to establish SAN!⁶ has had an influence on the ongoing process of policy development and implementation. At the beginning (2000-2003) SAN! was an instrument for fundraising, awareness building and lobbying. ‘More and better’ through cooperation was the slogan and the aim of the foundation in their fight against HIV/AIDS. This resulted in the availability of additional funds (for example 14 million euros in 2005) which could be used to identify HIV/AIDS-specific counterparts. In mid 2004, the cooperation between the CFAs and SAN! was reformulated and a new mission (research, action and development) was added to the three existing ones (fundraising, awareness building and lobbying). With this new development function, the CFAs within SAN! have the potential to elaborate strategies to confront crucial issues in a more effective and efficient way and on a larger scale.

In 2005 this resulted in a new dynamic with the creation of three development groups (Managing HIV/AIDS at the workplace, OVCs, and Gender and HIV/AIDS), each of them headed by a staff member of the CFAs. The objective of these development groups, which work with concrete project plans (with all characteristics of a project: well-defined objectives, strategy, activity plan, timeframe and a budget ) is to reflect on and to start working together on implementation. In support to common objectives such as ‘internal and external mainstreaming’, joint initiatives have been undertaken by the CFA’s with workshops in Ethiopia (including PLAN) and Sudan, financially supported by SAN. The SAN! project “Managing HIV/AIDS in the workplace” held several workshops in India and Uganda. In each country a total of more than 60 NGO’s participate. In these countries a local infrastructure for implementation was created. In the Netherlands, the project group discussed and drafted the donor guidelines, which were adopted, by the CFA’s directors, for the two pilot countries in December 2005. This project is technically and financially supported by SAN!. The quality and scale of these common initiatives have been very much appreciated, not only by the CFA’s, but also by the partner organisations.
Monitoring the implementation of the HIV/AIDS policy

Although most of the CFAs conduct internal reviews on the implementation of their HIV/AIDS policy, good and systematic monitoring data and action plans are lacking (NOVIB elaborated a detailed HIV/AIDS action plan in 2005). Nor has a knowledge management system been developed on the implementation of their HIV/AIDS policies. Only Novib financed a few studies on staff competence and mainstreaming and started building a knowledge management system with and between counterparts. In 2005 the four CFAs and the AIDS fund, united in SAN! shared and discussed a document on the ‘State of Affairs of implementation on HIV/AIDS policy’. These documents were prepared and discussed for the first time on August 31^st 2005. It is the intention to repeat this every year as learning and sharing process.