Mbn hiv/aids evaluation final report Team of consultants

4.1.2.3. Relevance

There is no doubt that NGOs are confronted with the continuous changing AIDS epidemic in the world. Hence it is of the utmost importance that the CFAs keep building up HIV/AIDS competence to react to the specific context of HIV/AIDS. The evaluators are of the opinion that the CFAs have made relevant choices but the response of the CFAs is slow and there is an urgent need to go to scale.
The choice to support generalist organisations to adapt their way of working and their programmes to the HIV/AIDS context is very relevant, especially in countries (or states) where the epidemic has reached the generalised phase and HIV/AIDS has become a development issue that has impact on every body’s lives and on every organisation. CFAs have responded in an appropriate way by supporting (internal and external) mainstreaming processes, some of them being innovative. Some examples: (1) The CFA’s are the first donors who adopted donor guidelines for the implementation of workplace policies of local NGO’s (for the two SAN! pilot countries in India and Uganda). There has been no other donor who took the challenge to speak out and make their support transparent to workplace policies of local NGO’s. The CFA’s within the partnership of SAN! experience a lot of interest from other big donors for this innovation. The donor guidelines will be presented at the global AIDS conference in Toronto, 2006. The next step is to get these accepted by natural allies, like Oxfam GB for Novib, who has 3000 counterparts or ICCO and Cordaid within their faith based networks and Plan within the Plan family. (2) The book of Sue Holden is the first book about mainstreaming HIV/AIDS. Her theory was based on what happened in the Joint Oxfam programme Malawi (Novib). Other mainstreaming guides (like from Swiss development co-operation, VSO, etc.) refer often to the Joint Oxfam programme in Malawi, which is an innovative programme on mainstreaming.
However the route from policy to practice in regard to these mainstreaming processes was rather long and started slow. It is in this area that the CFAs can put value to their comparative advantage, being generalist organisations with experiences in specific sectors, building up capacity of civil society organisations that challenge poverty and social injustice. CFAs have facilitated innovative work on HIV/AIDS, but this needs well planned scaling up strategies. Furthermore the CFAs can take the lead regarding HIV/AIDS policy development in the international networks and alliances they all are involved in.
Support to HIV/AIDS specific organisations remains relevant, in particular when specific target groups are reached such as sexual minorities. This focus will stay relevant as the rights of these target groups are often neglected by local HIV/AIDS programmes. However the evaluators are of the opinion that this support to HIV/AIDS focussed organisations needs to be focussed and specific in order to make the difference and to go to scale. Otherwise impact will remain limited. Going to scale can be realised, for example, by developing inspiring models of support of HIV/AIDS programmes that can be used by other donors (for example, the Plan Mali HIV/AIDS programme that has inspired big donors like the World Bank).
In order to find an appropriate answer to the HIV/AIDS epidemic it will be necessary to question the paradigms used. Seeing the experiences in countries as Zimbabwe and Malawi, which are already 20 to 25 years in the epidemic (having to deal with an enormous amount of AIDS deaths, less family coping strategies, more children who grow up without any parental support), the need for a new paradigm is calling. In a HIV/AIDS context one should not follow classical rules and regulations: one should question criteria such as effectiveness and sustainability and put them in perspective, even thinking of partnerships beyond 10 years and linking development paradigms and humanitarian paradigms.