The Annual PEPFAR HIV Implementer's Meeting on "Scaling Up Through Partnerships" in Kigali, Rwanda in June 2007 was a great success for HOPE worldwide and the ANCHOR partners. Dr. Marc Aguirre and Dr. Mark Ottenweller of HOPE worldwide (HWW) attended the conference with over 1500 delegates from the US and sites across Africa. Leaders of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), the Global AIDS Program of Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Global Fund, the World Health Organization, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) also attended the meeting.
HWW was able to present the ANCHOR program, enhance its US government relations, improve its model for community programs in Africa, and expand its donors and partnerships. Also meetings and discussions were held with the US country missions where the existing ANCHOR programs have been established and where new sites have been proposed. Dr. Marc Aguirre presented the ANCHOR Partnership at the session on "Public Private Partnerships: From Deal to Delivery" and Dr. Mark Ottenweller moderated a session on "Strengthening Communities' Role in Protecting and Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Children". Our presentation will be web cast next week at: http://www.kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/hivimplementers2007/ for June 18, 2007. There were several questions about how the partnership was formed and what expertise that corporate partners brought to the programs for orphans.
Dr. Aguirre also joined the Technical Working Group for Orphans of the USG for several key technical and strategic sessions on orphans. For example, the family approach for reaching Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) presented by World Vision was very dynamic, high impact, and easily adaptable to the HWW context. Key monitoring and evaluation issues were also discussed. Dr Martha Rogers from the Emory School of Public Health, who is also an ANCHOR partner, also attended the conference and many of the sessions on orphans. Community mobilization models, public-private partnerships, organizational capacity development, volunteerism, community ownership, and prevention for OVC were some of the key topics that were discussed. These meetings and discussions will greatly assist our program development.
The US government relations with the ANCHOR partners and HWW were greatly improved through meetings and discussions with Dr. Mark Dybul, the Director of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, and Dr.Tom Kenyon, the Assistant Coordinator of OGAC. Also meetings were held with Michelle Moloney-Kitts and Beverly Nyberg, the Senior OVC Advisors to OGAC and Ken Yamashita, the Senior OVC Advisor to USAID. The HWW team also met with Dr. Kevin DeKock, the Senior HIV/AIDS Advisor to the World Health Organization. Dr. DeKock assisted the establishment of the Centre D'Assistance Socio-Medicale of HWW in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 1990. Discussions were also held senior staff of with World Vision, UNICEF, Partners in Health, and USAID delegates from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa. Meetings were also held with Government officials from South Africa and the Ivory Coast
The Public Private Partnership Initiative of OGAC and USAID introduced HWW and its partners to the Phones for Health Consortium of GSM, Motorola, Accenture, and Voxiva which has set up a communication network for monitoring and tracking ARVs in Rwanda. The Phones for Health Consortium expressed a lot of interest in developing a tracking and monitoring system for orphans across Africa. The need for systems to track and monitor orphans is desperate and this is an incredible opportunity for program development. Also USAID and the Global Fund have mechanisms to fund organizational capacity building which HWW has already launched in Africa through funding from the Swedish International Development Agency, and this program could be easily expanded. Also HWW met with Shell Oil in Nairobi during its return trip to South Africa and worked on its proposal for Centers of Hope in Africa.
The PEPFAR Partner's Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda was a great success and greatly assisted ANCHOR in its efforts to scale up support for orphans and families affected by AIDS across Africa. Dr. Marc Aguirre and his team should be congratulated on their great dedication and their great work with orphans, their families, and their communities. We also want to thank Marion Bunch and Mark Doyle from the Rotarians For Fighting AIDS, Dr. Martha Rodgers from the Emory School of Public Health, and William Asiko, Sheree Shereni and Angie Ho from the Coca Cola Africa Foundation for all of their assistance to the programs and all of their efforts for the orphans and children affected by AIDS. We hope that the ANCHOR Partnership continues to extend its reach, improve its impact, and expand its partnerships to help more children devastated by AIDS in Africa.
Dr. Mark Ottenweller
HOPE worldwide Africa
