Mbn hiv/aids evaluation final report Team of consultants

6. Recommendations

6.1. Increase HIV/AIDS competence within the CFAs

Increasing the necessary competence of the ‘entire’ CFA to cope with the worldwide and still growing HIV/AIDS epidemic should be a high priority, because responding adequately to the challenges of HIV/AIDS needs more than what the present limited group of staff, which is HIV/AIDS competent, can perform. Programme officers need to have the knowledge and competence to manage a genuine and productive dialogue with counterparts on mainstreaming processes, on linking HIV/AIDS with other themes (gender, violence, sexuality, faith based issues, etc.), on the necessity of and how to network, on prevention, etc. In short, CFAs should invest more in HIV/AIDS-specialised profiles in their organisation and in upgrading the competence of their programme officers.

Challenges:

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  CFA’s should investigate how to deal with the dilemma “generalist programme officers” versus “specialised programme officers”. It can not be the purpose that all CFAs follow the example of Hivos to become specialised in certain themes, but the evaluators are of the opinion that certain specialisation is needed in the context of HIV/AIDS.
  
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  For the CFAs that opt for a horizontal structure (HIV/AIDS working groups and focal points) there is a need for better task descriptions for the focal points.
  
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  More practical tools are needed. For quality reasons, extensive (action) research and pre-testing are needed. It is most efficient and effective to do it as a group of CFAs. More exchange of good practices between the CFAs is recommended.
  
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  The HIV/AIDS policy officers of the CFA’s need more support from their managers to get HIV/AIDS better embedded in the organisation.
  
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  The internal knowledge management systems need to be improved.