Aidsfonds

Planning and Support Tool for Empowering Approaches to SRHR Education with Young People

Sue Holden Publications - English , , , , ,
Planning and Support Tool for Empowering Approaches to SRHR Education with Young People

Stop Aids Now! Planning & Support Tool

Evidence and Rights-based Planning and Support Tool for Empowering Approaches to SRHR Education with Young People

STOP AIDS NOW! (now Aidsfonds) and Rutgers asked me to revise their Planning and Support Tool, which they had first published in 2009.

This involved a good deal of research, consultation and writing, to bring the document into line with the agencies’ changing approaches and to respond to users’ requests.

Download the 2016 PDF (2.2Mb).

Extract

This tool is designed to assist organisations that want to promote young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and to empower them to enjoy their (sexual) development, relationships, attain their rights and have a greater sense of wellbeing. It focuses mainly on the strategy of SRHR education, also known as (comprehensive) sexuality education.

To improve young people’s quality of life and (sexual) health we need effective programmes, but developing and implementing them is not easy. However, experience and evidence gained from work all over the world shows what contributes to effectiveness and what doesn’t. This tool summarises the most important evidence in a logical and easy to use way (much of it comes from research by Kirby and colleagues into HIV and sexuality education programmes around the world). It aims to help organisations to take well-informed decisions about the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of SRHR programmes, and to modify their work as needed. The outcome of using the tool should be more effective interventions which are empowering and rights- and evidence-based.

You can use the tool to analyse existing interventions, in order to identify what is already going well and what needs improvement. You can also use it to assist with designing new interventions.

Users have used the tool for various purposes:
• Analysing existing SRHR education programmes
• Designing of new SRHR education programmes
• As a framework to guide discussion with donor organisations
• Capacity building and improvement of their projects or programmes
• Documenting intervention planning afterwards
• Modifying an existing intervention to use in a different context
• Assessing project proposals
• For defining advocacy strategies
• Linking and learning between different organisations

However, this framework should not oblige you to implement programmes completely according to the tool; the particular context, implementation setting or mandate of your organisation may require choices that are not in line with the tool.

You can use the tool to analyse or plan a variety of SRHR interventions, for example: school based and out-of-school interventions; large and small projects; with different SRHR focuses; targeting children, younger or older people; for orphans and vulnerable children; or for young people who are at work.

DOWNLOAD the full 2016 PDF.

The Big Picture: A guide for implementing HIV prevention that empowers women and girls

Sue Holden Publications - English , , , , , ,
The Big Picture - Implementing HIV prevention

The Big Picture: A guide for gender transformative HIV programming

From 2006 to 2010 STOP AIDS NOW! (now Aidsfonds) supported an innovative project in Kenya and Indonesia which gave equal weight to HIV prevention, gender equity and human rights. At the end of the project they asked me to set out the theory and practice of their partners’ efforts in a ‘how to’ guide. I co-authored the guide with the project’s manager, Jennifer Bushee.  Aidsfonds updated the guide in 2020, and that’s the version you can download here.

Download

Extract

This guide provides ‘how-to’ information for developing a gender transformative approach in HIV programming. A gender transformative approach addresses root causes of vulnerability to HIV and seeks to reshape the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of individuals and communities in favour of gender equality. It requires changing the policies, norms, and practices, which underlie gender inequality.

The information in this guide is based on experiences of organisations working with a gender transformative approach as well as up to date evidence. It provides practical steps you can follow to analyse and design your programme, as well as profound background information to understand what a gender transformative approach entails. Finally, it captures the experiences of organisations in four case studies found in section 3.

The advice in this guide is not fixed and definite; please read it as providing suggestions based on the experiences of Aidsfonds and partners. The tool gives guidance on how to think from a ‘gender transformative’ perspective, but it does not, for example, give step-by-step instructions for doing a gender analysis. The advice in this guide should be adapted to fit local needs and the relevant social, political, and cultural context.

This guide encourages readers to think differently about how to respond to HIV, using a holistic perspective, the so-called ‘big picture’. Therefore, it should be relevant for different types of interventions, beyond HIV programming.

Good Donorship in a Time of AIDS: Guidelines on Support to Partners to Manage HIV/AIDS in the Workplace

Sue Holden Publications - English , , , ,
internal mainstreaming HIV

HIV in the workplace
Good Donorship in a Time of AIDS: Guidelines on Support to Partners to Manage HIV/AIDS in the Workplace

These guidelines were the outcome of an interesting process of research and negotiation with five Dutch donors.

In them I set out the sponsoring donors’ commitments to support their partners’ efforts to manage HIV in their workplaces in pilot projects in Uganda and India. I also presented the rationale and basic steps for organisations to do this.

Download

Extract

Why have we developed these guidelines?

Breaking the silence: in many partnerships between Northern and Southern NGOs, HIV/AIDS is not discussed, or is discussed only in terms of the effects at community level. We want HIV/AIDS to be part of our dialogue with partners, and hope that these guidelines will lead to it being on the agenda, for both donors and partners. The guidelines may also help stimulate discussion within partner organizations.

Acting in solidarity: we are now in the late stages of developing and implementing workplace programs for our own staff, but are funding local partners which lack such programs. We believe we should actively open up dialogue and provide support to our partners, rather than be ‘concerned bystanders’, watching the impacts of HIV/AIDS on our partners but doing little to assist.

Getting our ‘heads out of the sand’: a recent CARE survey3 of 42 NGOs in Southern Africa found that, despite a HIV prevalence rate of around 25%, two thirds of the respondents said they did not think they had any HIV-positive employees! This vividly illustrates how managers may act like ostriches by ignoring difficult realities, a costly habit in the case of HIV/AIDS. These guidelines are about raising our heads, stating our commitments, communicating them to our partners, and helping them also to raise their heads.

Responding to demands from local NGOs: some donors expect better results from NGOs in high prevalence settings, or lower costs, as if HIV/AIDS does not exist. Research with local NGOs shows that instead of that lack of understanding, they want more openness, more support, and more clarity from their donors with regard to managing HIV/AIDS4 . These guidelines should go some way to meeting those demands.

Responding to demands from Program Officers: our Program Officers sometimes get requests from partners to fund their workplace policies. Some of them feel ill-equipped to deal with this new topic, and have asked for guidance. These guidelines should help them make decisions, and should ensure that partners’ requests are dealt with consistently within each of the Dutch donor NGOs.

Influencing others: other NGOs who work through partnership with organizations in the South are facing the same issues, but none have ‘grasped the nettle’ and developed guidelines on good donorship in a time of AIDS. We can share these guidelines with those development agencies, and so use them to stimulate their response. We expect that partners may also use these guidelines to influence their other donors towards ‘good donorship’ with regard to HIV/ AIDS.

Greater accountability: where local NGOs do not have budgets to cover employees’ health care costs, managers may cover the costs with money from other parts of their budgets. They are unlikely to tell their donors about this. These guidelines should increase communication and so accountability between us by providing clarity on what costs we are willing to fund, and by initiating dialogue between donors and partners, so that we can agree budgets to cover the financial costs of HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases.