Healthlink Worldwide

Capacity development activities

Responding flexibly to the different situations of the National AIDS Councils (NACs), carrying out needs assessments from the very beginning and filling in gaps that other donors are not keen to support means that NACs can genuinely develop their capacity.

Healthlink Worldwide provided support in areas such as documentation, learning, and communication, an integral part of building the NACs capacity.

Our activities were tailored to the needs of individual countries. The main components were:

1. Information needs assessments
These were completed in nine countries; Ghana, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Cameroon, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Different needs were identified and Healthlink engaged with the NACs to support them with their Information and Knowledge Management including:

• Internal information management needs of the NACs
• Information needs of agencies working with HIV and AIDS issues
• Communication of consistent messages
• A strategic approach to using information exchange with a broader aim of linking up more partners with the NACs

2. Review of Management Information Systems (MIS)
The review at the SIPAA Regional Office in Kenya revealed key challenges such as:

• Strengthening data security
• Developing an appropriate HIV and AIDS related classification scheme
• Processes for information storage and retrieval
• Effectively linking to ActionAid’s Intranet.

Rather than provide a purely ‘technical fix’ it was important to build on what staff were already doing with simple manageable systems to address communication gaps and information overload.

3. Regional training workshops
Two resource centre training workshops and two regional strategic communication workshops were organised in Ghana and Burundi, and a newsletter development workshop was held in Kenya.

- Resource centre workshops
These workshops aimed to strengthen the ability of the NACs and their partners to manage and develop information resource centres. The workshops provided a space to discuss the challenges raised in the information needs assessment and the MIS review. Key challenges for participants emerged, such as the:

• Limited coordination of HIV and AIDS information
• Challenges of developing resource centres in areas of low literacy rates
• Different understanding of the scope, role and function of resource centres
• Management, staffing and volunteer capacity to establish and maintain resource centres

One participant at the workshop commented: “The learning, knowledge and skills came from the participants. We interacted and shared a lot.”

- Strategic communication workshops
These workshops were designed to develop participants understanding of strategic communication and to give them practical examples relevant to their work. The workshops emphasised a range of key communication issues in the HIV and AIDS field. The workshops explored issues such as the:

• Importance of both social and behavioural changes in approaches to HIV and AIDS communication
• Appropriate processes and methods used by communication practitioners, especially in resource-poor environments
• Importance of developing interpersonal skills in strategic communication
• Limitations of communication models in situations of conflict and civil disruption
• The influence of external agencies and their requirements on NACs

- Newsletter workshop
This workshop focused on developing the participants skills to enable them to produce newsletters in their own country contexts. The workshop also supported the SIPAA team to develop the SIPAA newsletter, which highlights the different activities and outcomes of the SIPAA programme.

Emphasising the value of learning by doing, one of the newsletter workshop participants commented: “By the time you receive the second issues of my newsletter you will see some changes!”

4. Technical support to the NACs
The technical support visits were a key method used to address some of the issues that were highlighted by the Information Needs Assessments. The visits engaged the NACs with different aspects of their work, for example:

• The Zanzibar NAC technical support visit. This focused on establishing and maintaining their resource centre, support for filing and administrative systems at the Zanzibar AIDS council offices and the communication and production of educational information.
• The Swaziland NAC technical support visit. This focused on the development of a resource centre for internal use at the National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS, a national HIV and AIDS resource centre and the development and documentation of the Swaziland NACs communication strategy.

Two further technical support visits took place in Ethiopia, May 2005, the first supported the Ethiopia NAC to develop their documentation and learning strategy and the second focused on the process of decentralisation for their resource centres.