The Alliance was established in 1993 to support communities in key developing and transitional countries to play a full and effective role in the global response to AIDS. The Alliance accomplishes this by mobilising a broad range of non-governmental and community groups, increasing their access to resources at a local level, and enhancing their technical and organisational skills. The Alliance also supports groups to share lessons learned, to collaborate with government and civil society partners, and to participate in national and international policy development. In this way, the Alliance encourages creative HIV/AIDS prevention, care and impact-mitigation efforts that respond to the real needs of communities, are owned by local people and have a sustainable impact. With learning from these partnerships, the Alliance has developed a reputation as a centre of expertise on HIV/AIDS.
The Alliance’s goals are:
- to make a significant contribution to HIV prevention, AIDS care, and support to children affected by the epidemic, by working together with communities in developing countries.
- to promote the sustainability and scaling up of effective community AIDS efforts, by building the capacity of CBOs, NGOs an d NGO support programmes.
- to influence and improve the HIV/AIDS policies and programmes of international agencies, donors and the international NGO sector, with a particular emphasis on the role of community action.
To achieve these goals, the Alliance utilises three core programme strategies. These are: community level project support; the development of national, state or district level NGO support capacity; and national and international research, tools development, policy and advocacy.
The Alliance has worked in over 40 countries world-wide and has ongoing activities in 31 countries. Long-term programmes are in operation in Bangladesh, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ecuador, India, Madagascar, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Ukraine and Zambia. A new country programme has been launched in Mozambique, and programme development is underway in China. Additional countries involved in the Alliance’s regional activities include: Algeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos, Malawi, Mauritania, Myanmar, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
The Alliance is one of the few international development NGOs focused specifically on HIV/AIDS. Internationally, it serves as a Collaborating Centre of the Joint United Nations AIDS Programme (UNAIDS), has special consultative status with theEconomic andSocial Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations, and works closely with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the World Bank “MAP” (multi-sectoral AIDS Program) team. The Alliance is also increasing collaboration with the European Commission, to improve the effectiveness and targeting of EU development assistance for HIV/AIDS work.
The Alliance has received financial support from a broad range of donors, including the governments of Denmark, France, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA; the EU; UNAIDS and its co-sponsors; and private corporations and foundations including the Ford Foundation, Howard Gillman Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, American Express, Merck and Abbott Laboratories Step Forward Program.
The Alliance currently has 98 direct hire staff members from over 18 countries and with professional backgrounds in fields including public health, social policy, medicine, nursing, human rights law, development economics, business administration and anthropology. In-house HIV/AIDS technical expertise is thus available in a wide range of disciplines. In addition, specific technical support briefs have been established in: community mobilisation, focused prevention, AIDS care and support, support to orphans and children, the involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS, organisational development, monitoring and evaluation and operations research. The Alliance also has a large pool of international consultants upon whom it draws for specific technical assistance when that assistance cannot be provided in-house.
For more information about the Alliance, please visit: www.aidsalliance.org
Participants at a workshop in Mexico explore through the knotty problem game how they are best positioned to solve their own problems
SEADO, an NGO supported by the Alliance linking organisation in Cambodia, KHANA.
