South Africa

Sisonke

Based in the poor Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Sisonke is a large community based project driven by the energy and insight of small local community groups who are responding to evolving local needs and challenges. Sisonke works to strengthen and empower these groups to develop their HIV/AIDS interventions, and supports them in providing education and care in their communities.

Local community group providing lunch for children affected by AIDS, Sisonke Project

Community action growing vegetables to feed the AIDS orphans at the Sisonke project

Through these local groups, Sisonke is reaching out to, and working to meet the needs of over 800 orphans and vulnerable children, who are being looked after in the community. Training and support is being provided for the extended families, guardians and care-givers of these children in terms of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, support and care activities, as well as helping them meet their own needs through income generation and psychosocial support. Sisonke is also helping local people affected by, and infected with, HIV and AIDS to attain long-term sustainability through increased food security. Groups of local people are contributing their own time to establish gardens and community feeding schemes for the most vulnerable and AVERT has helped to provide some of the tools for these community initiatives, such as cooking stoves, large pots and gardening tools.

An increasing proportion of care for people with AIDS is having to be provided at home by immediate family and friends, so Sisonke is helping them to have training which educates them on how to care for sick and disabled people at home. This includes learning about proper opportunistic infections, pain control and nutrition, as well as staying safe as a carer. The people who have received training then pass on their skills to other carers in their area.

Older people are increasingly playing a major role in caring for younger adults sick with AIDS, and for their orphaned grandchildren. Through Sisonke a number of elderly care-givers came together and created the ‘Gogogetters’ (gogo is Xhosa for grandmother) group. The ‘Gogogetters’ support each other with the skills and knowledge they need to care for their orphaned grandchildren.

Tholulwazi Uzivikele

Tholulwazi Uzivikele is an AVERT Community Partner in the KwaZulu Natal province of South Africa, an area with one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world.

At the heart of Tholulwazi is a network of nearly 200 community workers who provide critically needed home based treatment, care and support for people living with AIDS in their area. Tholulwazi helps these community members access training which strengthens their capacity to provide appropriate and quality care for those suffering from AIDS, and increases their knowledge to protect those who are not already infected. These community home based care workers offer assistance to around 3,000 people a month, making thousands of home visits. These workers also help Tholulwazi to reach out to nearly 1,500 orphans and vulnerable children, working to address their healthcare, psychosocial, economic and educational needs.

Mpfuxelelo

The Mpfuxelelo project is a health infrastructure project located in a rural and remote area of the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The project is working to improve the HIV/AIDS services at Tintswalo Hospital where there is a huge demand for HIV/AIDS services, as there are an estimated 15,000-18,000 people living with HIV and AIDS in the area who are currently in need of treatment.

Mosa (Director of Mpfuxelelo) and project member with a display at the Mpfuxelelo project launch at Tintswalo hospital, South Africa.

Mpfuxelelo’s activities are carried out by trained staff and counsellors drawn from the local community, and they offer education, support and access to treatment to all who need it. Mpfuxelelo members also attend community HIV/AIDS meetings and events, and visit community based HIV/AIDS organisations and other groups. Mpfuxelelo identifies and supports potential, new or active community HIV/AIDS interventions.

Particularly important are the peer educators, trained by Mpfuxelelo to provide essential HIV/AIDS information to hospital workers, day visitors, in-patients and out-patients. Mpfuxelelo also provides HIV counselling and testing services through caring and supportive lay counsellors. These counsellors promote HIV risk-reduction and safer health and sexual practices among non-infected adults and children, as well as supporting prevention of mother to child transmission activities and conducting many tasks previously conducted by hospital nurses, thereby increasing the time they have for caring for patients. HIV positive people are identified, supported and appropriately referred to relevant hospital departments for care and treatment.

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Malawi

Partners in Hope

Partners In Hope (PIH) is a Malawian organisation providing integrated prevention, treatment, care and support activities for people living with HIV/AIDS in the Lilongwe area of Malawi. PIH have a sustainable commitment to HIV prevention, and with AVERT’s help an important component of their work is an extensive outreach programme for voluntary HIV testing and counselling (VCT).

Despite a growing awareness of HIV/AIDS and related issues, large numbers of people in the local areas are not seeking testing. When it became apparent that people are much more prepared to be tested for HIV in their homes than in a community setting, PIH with AVERT’s help, redirected their testing and counselling programme to make HIV testing possible for more people by taking it to their homes. Volunteer and fulltime counsellors from the local community conduct door-to-door VCT activities after raising awareness in the general community.

There is also a Healthy Village Project, an innovative programme in a rural community, integrating HIV/AIDS interventions into a basic primary healthcare package that has the best chance of meeting the community’s needs.

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India

Rural Welfare Organisation

The Rural Welfare Organisation (RWO) is an AVERT Community Partner in the rural part of Tamil Nadu, India. A large proportion of the local population are migrant workers who have limited information, support and health services relating to HIV/AIDS, increasing their vulnerability to the disease. RWO have specially designed activities to address the critical limitations in AIDS awareness in these communities. As part of this, RWO is helping local people living with HIV and AIDS to access training in becoming peer educators. These community volunteers can then initiate HIV/AIDS counselling and advice groups, and organise HIV awareness events within their own communities. Within the first year of this project, RWO successfully trained over 200 peer educators.

Front view of the mobile HIV testing unit.

A crucial part of RWO’s advocacy is the meaningful involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS in care and community-level support building. RWO directly involves people with HIV in strengthening and developing new and existing collaborations between public, private, non-governmental, and community-based health structures. RWO also works to meet the economic needs of people living with, and severely affected by, HIV/AIDS by supporting them in achieving a sustainable livelihood through training workshops on income generation, government schemes and business training.

Through their work and knowledge of the limitations in local service provision, RWO has identified travel distance as a major barrier for rural people living with HIV and AIDS in accessing healthcare and HIV/AIDS services. This increasingly drives local people to unlicensed medical practitioners or healers at huge risk to their wellbeing. In a direct response, at the beginning of 2009, RWO with AVERT’s help, launched an innovative mobile VCT (voluntary HIV testing and counselling) unit. This unit provides local people with access to treatment and prevention of opportunistic infections, VCT including immediate results, doses of the drug nevirapine for preventing the transmission of HIV from mother to child, and wider reproductive health services.

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New HIV & AIDS projects

At present AVERT has some money available for new HIV & AIDS projects and partnerships in Southern and East Africa. If your organisation would like to apply for a grant, then please email us at info@avert.org with some information about your organisation and what HIV and AIDS activities you do at present. Then please tell us about the HIV and AIDS activities that you would like to be funded, and the costs of these new activities. Please provide any costs in your local currency. AVERT is interested in providing money for a number of different HIV/AIDS activities, including HIV prevention, access to treatment and care, and community care for children.

Applications for funding can be sent to AVERT at any time, and a decision about an application is usually made within four weeks. An initial grant is normally for a maximum of £10,000 ($16,000) for a year, but can be increased in future years.

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