Communities Responding to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic (CORE) Initiative

• Project Overview
• Objectives and Strategies
• Activities and Highlights
• Accomplishments to Date
• Materials and Resources
• Contact Information

Project Overview

The CORE Initiative, made up of a consortium led by CARE in partnership with the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs (CCP), and the World Council of Churches (WCC), partners with community and faith-based groups to advance multi-sectoral responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic through grants, capacity building, and networking.

With support from USAID, the CORE Initiative was launched in January 2003, and is expected to end in September 2007. In addition to the African initiatives in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and South Africa, CORE also runs programs in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Objectives/Strategies

Mission: To support an inspired, effective, and inclusive response to the causes and consequences of HIV/AIDS by strengthening the capacity of community and faith-based groups.

Approach: Leverage existing efforts, while catalyzing and encouraging new efforts through innovative partnerships in the areas of community-based prevention, stigma reduction, and care and support to people living with HIV/AIDS and their families. The CORE Initiative does this through:

Grants: Large and small grants are issued to eligible recipients in order to increase access to resources.
Capacity-building: CORE builds the technical and organizational capacity of its grantees.
Networking: This component increases access to and expands the reach of existing strategic networks and information resources for grantees and stakeholders.

The CORE Initiative promotes a multi-sectoral approach in its programming to encourage each sector to address the epidemic’s root causes, including access to education, food security, health services, and income-generating opportunities. This approach recognizes that vulnerability to HIV can be inextricably linked to socioeconomic, demographic, and socio-cultural factors that may enhance or discourage risk behavior.

CCP’s contributions to the CORE Initiative are guided by two main scopes of work:

1. Directing the strategic communication components of the CORE Initiative, including programming, planning, and implementation.
2. Developing mechanisms for effective C/FBO networking, advocacy, and exchange of information (e.g. materials, tools and reports) regarding HIV/AIDS at the community level.

Activities and Highlights

Web site: CCP has played a major role in developing the CORE Initiative web site and implementing CORE Initiative’s PR strategy. Regular site updates keep users informed about the CORE Initiative, HIV/AIDS news, resources and conferences. To date, the site has had over 2,000,000 successful requests for web pages. The CORE Initiative won the 2005 Award of Distinction for best overall web site by The Communication Awards, an international competition that recognizes outstanding work in the communication field.

E-forum: The CORE Initiative E-Forum was launched in April 2003 to increase networking and lesson sharing among community and faith-based groups. The E-Forum provides a venue for members to share HIV/AIDS news and views globally. Current membership is over 1,145 members (990 regular, 158 digest).

Clearinghouse Exchange: The CORE Initiative Clearinghouse maintains a collection of HIV/AIDS related materials, tools and reports from all over the world, with over 1,600 new HIV/AIDS related items added to this clearinghouse thus far. These materials and tools are quickly catalogued, digitized and made available online via the CORE Initiative web site and in response to specific requests.

Accessibility: CCP staff analyzed grantee surveys appraising their IT capacity, including access to e-mail, Internet, and telephone communications. Based on grantee responses, staff recommended ways the CORE Initiative web site and E-Forum can better serve grantees, and developed networking guidelines for low IT access users.

Community-Level Advocacy Strategies: The CORE Initiative helps clusters of grantees in each country assess and articulate the challenges they encounter in their HIV/AIDS work, identify a common purpose that can be addressed through advocacy activities, and develop an advocacy strategy.

Accomplishments to Date

General: CCP helped develop the vision for the CORE Initiative’s strategic communication approach, as well as the BCC capacity building strategy. Currently, CCP provides technical support and capacity building to small and large grantees, and proposal design guidance to organizations such as the YMCA World Alliance, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), Church World Service (CWS), The World Association of Christian Communicators (WACC), and the Organization of Independent African Churches (OAIC). Other CCP functions include curriculum development, training assistance, workshop coordination and facilitation, new staff recruitment, and reviews of M&E/MIS instruments.

Sierra Leone and Rwanda: In 2004, the CORE Initiative received its first Associate Award from the Displaced Children and Orphan’s Fund (DCOF) at USAID. This Associate Award supports activities with Right to Play to integrate HIV/AIDS into their Sport Health and Sport Works programs in Sierra Leone and Rwanda. CCP coordinated the technical development of the Associate Award with Right to Play and provided extensive TA in volunteer training in Toronto, curriculum development for volunteers and coaches, design workshops format development and facilitation in Sierra Leone and Rwanda, and the grantee monitoring and evaluation framework.

Uganda: In 2005, the CORE Initiative received its second Associate Award from the Uganda Mission. Under this Associate Award, the CORE Initiative is working with the Ministry of Gender, Labor, and Social Development (MGLSD) to expand targeted services for youth and critical services for orphaned and other vulnerable children. The long term goal of the advocacy and communication component of the CORE Initiative is threefold:

• Position the MGLSD as the lead coordinating body for OVC programming
• Raise the level of concern and attention paid to OVC and their special needs at all levels by policy makers and influencers
• Convince OVC stakeholders to implement the NSPPI and to increase resources allocated to OVC programming

Through the CORE Initiative, CCP assisted the MGLSD with the design of Uganda’s National OVC Policy (NOP) and National Strategic Program Plan of Interventions for Orphans and other Vulnerable Children (NSPPI). Recently, the MGLSD published a booklet summarizing the NOP and NSPPI for people working directly with vulnerable children. The booklet explains the programming priorities and recommended guiding principles detailed in the national policy and strategy. CCP is providing ongoing technical assistance to MGLSD in advocacy and communication strategy implementation.

CCP is also supporting the development of an OVC webpage within the MGLSD website. The webpage will highlight the mission, vision, and mandate of the OVC Secretariat, list key indicators on the situation of children and youth in Uganda, and make available policies, strategies, standards, guidelines, and tools to support the implementation of activities and services for OVC.

Malawi: CCP Malawi provided extensive content development for the CCP-led Malawi BRIDGE Project TB/AIDS proposal. This proposal uses community communication techniques to raise awareness on the relationship between HIV/AIDS and TB, reduce associated stigma, and increase service utilization.

Materials and Resources

1. Project Cycle Management: CBO Training Toolkit – This toolkit supports CBOs in developing countries to design, manage and learn from their projects in a systematic way by improving understanding of the project cycle.

2. CBO/FBO Capacity Analysis – A Tool for Assessing and Building Capacities for High Quality Responses to HIV/AIDS – This tool enables community- and faith-based organizations to analyze levels of capacity in different organizational and technical areas.

3. A Positive Woman’s Survival Kit – This guide aims to help HIV positive women address issues such as a recent diagnosis, decisions to have children, planning for their children's future, nutrition, stress reduction and dealing with grief and loss.

4. Live Safe Play Safe – A life-skills course to protect children from HIV-infection. Facilitator’s Guide. Chapter 5. – This manual outlines an HIV/AIDS education curriculum for young people.

5. Implementing Live Safe, Play Safe: A Teacher’s Guide – This guide provides tips for teachers on how to implement an HIV/AIDS education program for young people.

6. HIV, AIDS and Islam – This publication addresses many issues faced by Muslim communities affected by HIV and AIDS.

7. Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation of Community- and Faith-Based Programs - This step-by-step guide is for people who want to make HIV and AIDS services and activities more effective in their community.

Contact Information

Baltimore: William Glass, wglass@jhuccp.org
Field (Uganda): Cheryl Lettenmaier, cheryll@hcpuganda.org