New partnerships in Indonesia
24 September 2007
In 2006, the Alliance identified Indonesia as a new focus country because of its burgeoning HIV epidemic, emerging civil society movement, and a historically low emphasis on building the capacity of civil society. Since then, the Alliance has been working to build partnerships at a provincial and national level – working with Rumah Cemera, an NGO supporting recovering drug users and people living with HIV in Bandung, West Java, at the same time as supporting the emerging national network of people living with HIV.
Rumah Cemara’s strengths lie in its community level connections (a rarity in the HIV response in Indonesia) and the enthusiasm of its staff and volunteers. It started in January 2003 as a small support group for injecting drug users (the primary means of HIV transmission in Indonesia) and has evolved into an organisation of nearly 40 staff, providing grants to other community-based organisations, and providing support to people with HIV, and outreach, harm reduction, and rehabilitation work.
Rumah Cemara has had limited organisational support to date – something that the Alliance is now addressing. The Alliance has been working with Rumah Cemara to analyse its organisational capacity and at the start of 2008, the Alliance will be providing strategic planning support – with the aim of Rumah Cemara becoming an Alliance linking organisation later on in the year. The Alliance is already supporting some of Rumah Cemara’s work, for example covering a funding shortfall for a project for female injecting drug users and their children.
Working at a national level can be a challenge in Indonesia, where national NGOs are a relatively new concept, so the Alliance has started by focusing its efforts at a provincial level. The country’s politics add to the challenge – for example, Indonesia’s provinces often vary in their understanding and implementation of national policies.
Nevertheless, the Alliance has continued to examine how it can support national-level responses and in February 2007, the Alliance suggested a meeting of people living with HIV at the country’s third national HIV conference – as a first step towards setting up a committee for the national network. It was the first time that such a meeting had been open to all and the Alliance supported around 120 people living with HIV to attend the event – with around 220 people attending overall. The committee has now been set up, and the Alliance has committed to provide capacity-building support for the network.
