Mbn hiv/aids evaluation final report Team of consultants
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- workshop on WPP (’05) |
(*) Remark: (1) only the following activities are mentioned in the table: workshops, trainings open for many counterparts and the development and distribution of resource material. (2) Plan: initiatives related to shared learning and linking are the responsibility of Plan country offices. Programme officers can make suggestions to the country offices.
It can be concluded that the CFAs also took a pro-active role by bringing counterparts together to discuss the consequence of HIV/AIDS for their organisations and their development practice, and to discuss the CFA’s HIV/AIDS policy and implementation plans:
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Cordaid and ICCO organised partner consultations in different countries in 2002 and 2003 (including South Africa, Malawi and Zimbabwe). ICCO discussed at these meetings, and others, the Eucumenical HIV/AIDS Initiative for Africa (EHAIA). -
NOVIB organised partner consultations through the joint Oxfam programmes (South Africa and Malawi). -
HIVOS conducted reviews of its HIV/AIDS policy, based on a large consultation of its counterparts, including counterparts from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi (review in 2000 and a review in 2003).
Complementary to the above, the CFA’s allocated separate budgets (small grants) for the support to the (internal and external) mainstreaming processes of individual counterparts, which are mainly used for the development of workplace policies. Novib and Cordaid in particular allocated small grants for their counterparts to that end:
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NOVIB created the opportunity to allocate small additional funds for support to internal and external mainstreaming processes in 2004 (1 million EURO – 5000 EUR/counterpart). -
Cordaid developed a capacity building programme in collaboration with ETC and KIT, including workshops and small grants. (600,000 EUR for the period 2001-2004) -
ICCO did not allocate separate budgets, but due to the fact that core funding constitutes the main financial instrument, partners can use the budgets in a rather flexible way, changing budget lines according to the needs. The example of AFSA in South Africa shows that ICCO is already funding additional overhead costs related to the workplace policy. In Zimbabwe, collaboration with EED has been sought, resulting in the elaboration of an organisational development support trajectory for interested counterparts, including HRM and HIV/AIDS (to be started). -
HIVOS has occasionally committed budget for internal mainstreaming (e.g. YONECO) and pays medical insurance coverage, including ARV, for the visited Zimbabwean counterparts (SAFAIDS and WASN).
All counterparts visited really appreciated this additional support, explaining that elaboration of workplace policies, but especially the implementation of workplace policies, is obstructed by the lack of funding. With the small budgets, counterparts were able to finance research, and AIDS work with staff and consultants who gave advice on work place policy development. But counterparts still lack funds to finance the implementation of these workplace policies, in particular to pay the increased overhead costs. To this end the recent development of donor guidelines (SAN-initiative) is of great importance for all counterparts in high prevalence regions. However, only Novib adopted the good donorship guidelines which gives clarity to all Novib counterparts. The other CFAs adopted these guidelines for the two SAN! pilot countries, Uganda and India.
The CFAs also support counterparts specialised in organisational development and/or HIV/AIDS mainstreaming. Some of these counterparts are also involved in specific HIV/AIDS-related research, funded among others by the CFAs, and are linked to other counterparts of the CFAs. Most important examples:
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CORDAID supports CDRA, OLIVE, Cabungo and Intrac. Intrac did research on the organisation costs of HIV/AIDS in civil society organisations. OLIVE and CDRA were involved in horizontal learning initiatives, bringing together experiences of many organisations. Based on these experiences, CDRA developed a booklet “positive organisations living and working with the invisible impact of HIV/AIDS: a resource for NGOs”. The results of these studies are disseminated amongst counterparts in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. -
HIVOS supports CDRA, SAFAIDS and SIAAP (India) who can give advice on workplace policy development. Hivos used to support also WASN (now Novib). ICCO also supports SAFAIDS. -
NOVIB supports Cabungo through the joint Oxfam HIV/AIDS programme and WASN.
One can conclude that apart from the annual visits to the counterparts by programme officers, CFAs took several initiatives to support counterparts beyond the financial support. Participation of counterparts in these initiatives and the implementation of lessons learned in their own practice is another matter. Regarding this, counterparts mentioned they would appreciate a more intensive engagement and understanding of the CFA’s programme officers in their strategic thinking and discussions. Dialogues were not always inspiring according to the counterparts visited (few exceptions from the regional office of Hivos in Harare and the former Cordaid programme officer for South Africa). The evaluators did not find evidence of discussions between counterparts and CFAs on, for instance, participation of PLWHA in programme planning, the link between gender and HIV/AIDS, or on scaling up the HIV/AIDS competence of the organisation and its staff.
This desired engagement is not easy. On the one hand, programme officers at CFAs are generalists (except HIVOS which has been involved in a reorganisation process since July 2005) being confronted with more specialised staff within counterparts (see counterparts in India). On the other hand, as revealed in EQ1, the level of engagement depends a lot on the capacity, and personality, of individual programme officers to discuss a sensitive issue such as HIV/AIDS with the counterparts.
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