HIV and AIDS - Support to the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa (SIPAA)
Overview
"Stimulate, share, capture and communicate learning". This was the basis of Healthlink Worldwide’s approach to the management of the Documentation and Learning Component of the Support to International Partnership against AIDS in Africa (SIPAA), completed in 2005.
SIPAA aimed to strengthen the responses of the National AIDS Councils (NACs) and their partners to HIV and AIDS in Africa. Working with nine African countries, Healthlink Worldwide developed a series of activities that operated at a country level and between countries to enable governments, civil society organisations, private and community sectors, and national and international organisations to work more effectively together to reduce the spread and impact of HIV and AIDS.
The SIPAA programme was administered by ActionAid Africa and was funded by the Department for International Development as part of its broader support to the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa (IPAA)
The nations involved with SIPAA varied enormously in terms of their size, HIV prevalence and history of responses to HIV and AIDS but all were committed to using the vehicle of the National AIDS Councils to respond to the HIV crisis.
The Documentation and Learning component of SIPAA supported the NACs and their partners to:
- Strengthen their information and knowledge management
- Strengthen their documentation processes
- Share good practices and lessons learned and communicate these to SIPAA stakeholders
- Strengthen the processes of learning
- Enhance the sharing and learning between countries.
Activities
Healthlink Worldwide divided activities into three
main areas, which built on existing processes of information
and knowledge management, learning and communication in and between the
SIPAA countries, which included:
- Capacity building of the NACs in the nine SIPAA countries in information management and information sharing
- Inter-country learning of practical HIV and AIDS response initiatives and innovations
- SIPAA programme communications that informs and influences all stakeholders at a national and regional level.
Work included supporting the NACs to develop their AIDS resource centres, holding regional workshops and learning exchanges, organising learning forums and running technical support visits, conducting a Management Information Systems review at the SIPAA regional office, and developing information management strategies. The experiences and lessons learned have also been documented in the SIPAA newsletter (see links on the right-hand side of the page).
In summer 2005 key lessons and outcomes were documented in the SIPAA learning publication.
Download the learning publication (PDF 52 pages, 873 KB)
More on the SIPAA website (www.actionaid.org/sipaa)