HIV and AIDS - Child-Centred Approaches to HIV and AIDS (CCATH)
CCATH Partners
The CCATH project involved six main partners. These were ACET in Uganda, Child-to-Child Uganda, NACWOLA in Uganda, KANCO in Kenya and in the UK, Child-to-Child Trust and Healthlink Worldwide.
It was an advantage to have partners with different focus areas and approaches in working with children in communities affected by HIV and AIDS. Each of the CCATH partners had different capacity levels, expertise and organisational strengths. The sharing of ideas, experiences and skills between partners has contributed to strengthening the partnership as well as making an impact in communities.
ACET, Uganda contributed to the partnership through experience in Life Skills-based education to develop children's communication and coping skills. They have experience in facilitating training courses and producing training materials for formal and non-formal educational settings. ACET facilitated seminars for children and parents to promote open communication and mutual understanding.
Child-to-Child Uganda, works in primary schools promoting the principle of children helping and supporting each other. They have brought into the partnership expertise in consulting and working with school children using child-centred approaches. This helped to raise the voices of children in the project through, for example, forming clubs where children share problems and work together to find solutions.
NACWOLA, Uganda has introduced the idea of the Memory Project whereby parents living with HIV record their own and their children's past lives, celebrating the good, loving memories in a Memory Book jointly developed by parents and children. The Memory Project also helps parents and children to prepare for bereavement and make concrete plans for the future. In the project they have developed their experience of working directly with children living with or affected by HIV and AIDS at the community level.
KANCO, Kenya has expertise in material development, running resource centres and communicating HIV and AIDS information using varied approaches. They identified and shared experiences on existing strategies being undertaken by CBOs in Kenya . KANCO also operates at the national and international level, influencing policy in relation to children and HIV and AIDS.
Child-to-Child Trust brought its experience in supporting the development of local Child-to-Child initiatives to use child–centred approaches effectively in their work. They have also contributed technical skills, supporting partners in strategic planning, in child-centred participatory research, in designing health education materials and in facilitating participatory planning and evaluation.
More on the Child-to-Child Trust website
Healthlink Worldwide supported partners in developing health communication strategies which increased dialogue about health and development issues in the project communities. Healthlink provided practical and up to date information materials and services, technical advice, training and capacity development to partners