Alliance and UNICEF support community action in Mozambique
24 September 2007
The Alliance in Mozambique has recently initiated a project alongside UNICEF called Supporting Community Action for Children and Families affected by HIV/AIDS, which provides training, capacity building and financial support to local organisations to implement HIV interventions.
The project will work with communities to make sure it targets those who are most vulnerable to HIV. It will stimulate and strengthen community-based HIV responses and support families to cope with the impact of HIV. It will help communities to define their own needs and to identify vulnerable children and households. The programme will also advocate for the government to protect the most vulnerable children and provide essential services.
The programme is made up of two complementary projects. The first will support 30 community-based organisations in Manica and Sofala provinces to strengthen community action for children and families affected by HIV. The second, Confronting and challenging HIV/AIDS-related stigma, implemented collaboratively with RENSIDA, the Mozambican network of organisations of people living with HIV, is intended to build the capacity of seven facilitators – selected from the staff of RENSIDA member organisations – to support their own and other organisations in better understanding and challenging HIV-related stigma and discrimination.
As part of the programme, the Alliance organised anti-stigma training for staff from organisations working with people living with HIV and orphans and vulnerable children. Using the toolkit Understanding and challenging HIV stigma, the training aimed to help participants better understand and challenge stigma in their day to day work, and to train other organisations to challenge stigma within and outside their organisations.
Other activities underway by the Alliance to support children in Mozambique includes participating in a provincial technical working group, and exploring the possibility of undertaking joint programming alongside the World Food Programme and UNICEF Mozambique to support increased access to basic services and social protection for orphans and vulnerable children. Work is underway and, as a result of this process, an agreement has been reached to provide and distribute basic packages of materials and food to orphans and vulnerable children through existing national systems in Sofala and Tete Provinces.
