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Building partnerships
Partnerships must be genuine to optimise the strengths of all those involved in the response to HIV/AIDS
To download this policy statement as a PDF file, click here.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance works with communities in developing countries to prevent the spread of HIV, support and care for those infected and ease the impact of HIV on families and communities. Building partnerships is an essential way of ensuring that HIV/AIDS work is implemented efficiently and effectively. This is achieved not only by optimising the resources of different parties and avoiding duplication, but also by generating trust and reducing competition through increased information exchange and by building an understanding of different perspectives.
Since its establishment in 1993, the Alliance has provided both financial and technical support to over 1,500 HIV/AIDS projects and has worked with NGOs and CBOs from over 40 countries. This experience reveals that:
and expertise of others so that more can be achieved together.
The Alliance believes that the United Nations and its Member States should:
The Alliance’s contribution will be:
AIDS in Africa.
An example from Senegal:
The “Alliance nationale de lutte contre le sida” (ANCS) in Senegal has been at the forefront of promoting a government-NGO partnership approach to care in under-served districts of the country. ANCS began work with the local Social Services Department in Louga in 1997, to create a joint NGO-government "cellule" with a
mission to support PLHA by mobilising and co-ordinating services through existing agencies.
Cellule volunteers include social workers, health professionals and PLHA. They are trained in counselling and hold regular meetings to discuss difficult cases and plan activities. The Cellule works closely with a network of health professionals and community groups, including the Louga Hospital and community pharmacy, to ensure services for PLHA such as home and hospital visits, referrals, and confidential counselling. They also provide small grants to PLHA to establish income generating activities, and carry out awareness raising among people with the potential to provide support to PLHA (such as local co-operatives and youth groups).
At the beginning, it was a challenge to convince doctors that their patients would benefit. One Cellule member says, "We had to talk frankly with the doctors and explain our strategies in order to convince them of the mutual interest they and we had in collaborating." Now, however, the Cellule is held up as a model for comprehensive approaches to treatment access, support and prevention.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance
mailto:mail@aidsalliance.org
www.aidsalliance.org
www.aidsmap.com
May 2001
To download this policy statement as a PDF file, click here.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance works with communities in developing countries to prevent the spread of HIV, support and care for those infected and ease the impact of HIV on families and communities. Building partnerships is an essential way of ensuring that HIV/AIDS work is implemented efficiently and effectively. This is achieved not only by optimising the resources of different parties and avoiding duplication, but also by generating trust and reducing competition through increased information exchange and by building an understanding of different perspectives.
Since its establishment in 1993, the Alliance has provided both financial and technical support to over 1,500 HIV/AIDS projects and has worked with NGOs and CBOs from over 40 countries. This experience reveals that:
- Partnerships are a means to achieving a common aim and not an achievement in themselves. Partnerships should have well-articulated, tangible outcomes and a clear rationale for the involvement of each party. Just being seen to work together is not enough.
- There are many types of partnerships that the Alliance believes are vital to optimise the response to HIV/AIDS, many of which cross sectors and promote political commitment, including partnerships that enable funding, programme implementation, service delivery and referral, and technical support.
- NGOs and CBOs quickly recognise that partnerships can increase and sustain the impact of their work. As no organisation or sector can work in isolation, these partnerships can help reduce duplication and provide useful linkages with other organisations. By working together, organisations can make different contributions to one another, such as the provision of skills, resources, experience and influence.
- Young, small organisations are often more receptive to the formation of partnerships than more established, larger organisations. The Alliance believes that this reveals a bias towards seeing a partnership predominantly as a funding relationship, rather than as a process to co-ordinate multi-party programmes, achieve greater political impact on issues, or capitalise on the experience
and expertise of others so that more can be achieved together.
- Multi-sectoral partnerships are often encouraged, but partnerships within sectors are also needed to improve the co-ordination and effectiveness of local and national responses to HIV/AIDS. The Alliance believes that these need to be encouraged, financed and actively fostered.
- Funding partnerships can involve non-traditional parties or sectors in the broad response to HIV/AIDS. This facilitates communication and improved understanding of the perspectives of NGOs, people with HIV and communities. The support provided by pharmaceutical companies for activities at a community level in developing countries has resulted in companies gaining first-hand experience of the challenges faced by people with and people affected by HIV/AIDS in these countries.
The Alliance believes that the United Nations and its Member States should:
- Facilitate partnerships between NGOs and governments at the national level to ensure that decisions are made with wider consultation and to make the most of the different strengths of different sectors. Such partnerships also ensure that the national perspective of the government is balanced by the NGOs’ perspectives which are informed by their close links with communities at local level.
- Support, encourage and where possible finance partnerships within sectors to facilitate collaboration on common issues concerning HIV/AIDS. Examples of partnerships within sectors include NGO consortia on HIV/AIDS, National Business Coalitions on HIV/AIDS, and media consortia on HIV/AIDS.
- Encourage partnerships between government and media, businesses, religious groups, groups of people living with HIV/AIDS, traditional healers and others who may not traditionally have been included but who have much to offer in preventing HIV or caring for people who are infected and affected.
- Recognise and promote the concept that partnerships work best when there is a clear rationale for the involvement of all partners and when each partner has a unique contribution to make.
- Encourage partnerships that bring together key stakeholders to facilitate an effective response to the epidemic. For example, effective health services can only be delivered through partnerships between communities, civil society rganisations, the private sector, and governmental and intergovernmental organisations.
The Alliance’s contribution will be:
- To continue to include training in partnership building as a key component of capacity building work with NGO support programmes and skills building Programmes with NGOs and CBOs, both through country programmes and at conferences.
- To continue to promote and advocate for partnership building through the dissemination of the English and French versions of the Alliance’s toolkit Pathways to Partnerships, and through publications and presentations emphasising the importance of developing partnerships.
- To produce and disseminate the Pathways to Partnerships toolkit in Spanish and Portuguese in collaboration with our Latin American partners.
- To continue to work in partnership with other sectors, including the business sector through the Global Business Council HIV and AIDS’s Advisory Group, international agencies, including as a UNAIDS Collaboration Centre, the media sector through reactive information provision and across all sectors through participation in activities organised through the International Partnership on
AIDS in Africa.
An example from Senegal:
The “Alliance nationale de lutte contre le sida” (ANCS) in Senegal has been at the forefront of promoting a government-NGO partnership approach to care in under-served districts of the country. ANCS began work with the local Social Services Department in Louga in 1997, to create a joint NGO-government "cellule" with a
mission to support PLHA by mobilising and co-ordinating services through existing agencies.
Cellule volunteers include social workers, health professionals and PLHA. They are trained in counselling and hold regular meetings to discuss difficult cases and plan activities. The Cellule works closely with a network of health professionals and community groups, including the Louga Hospital and community pharmacy, to ensure services for PLHA such as home and hospital visits, referrals, and confidential counselling. They also provide small grants to PLHA to establish income generating activities, and carry out awareness raising among people with the potential to provide support to PLHA (such as local co-operatives and youth groups).
At the beginning, it was a challenge to convince doctors that their patients would benefit. One Cellule member says, "We had to talk frankly with the doctors and explain our strategies in order to convince them of the mutual interest they and we had in collaborating." Now, however, the Cellule is held up as a model for comprehensive approaches to treatment access, support and prevention.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance
mailto:mail@aidsalliance.org
www.aidsalliance.org
www.aidsmap.com
May 2001