Alliance Caribbean becomes an independent linking organisation
25 November 2008
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance has demonstrated its ongoing commitment to create a global network of indigenous, independent, sustainable organisations with the successful evolution of the Caribbean country office into an independent national linking organisation.
Building the capacity of country offices so they can mature into larger, more autonomous national linking organisations is at the heart of the Alliance’s vision and its current three-year strategic plan. Why?
The Alliance believes that with independent governance structures, independent linking organisations can produce stronger local ownership and more empowered local leadership. Their indigenous voice can also be more credible and powerful in the national context. An alliance of diverse linking organisations that represent lots of different local contexts is also in a unique position to influence the national and international HIV policy and financial environment, and so enable more effective civil society responses to HIV.
“The challenges for tackling the epidemic in the Caribbean are still enormous but the new Alliance Caribbean represents a hope and an opportunity to put the populations most at risk at the centre of the response.” said Basil Williams, Regional Director of Alliance Caribbean.
The transition process took 12 months but the story really began in 2002 when the Alliance first established a presence in the Caribbean. The decision to start a programme there was informed by findings from an assessment of the situation of populations key to the dynamics of the epidemic in the English-speaking part of the region.
The region posed enormous challenges. In addition to having the second highest HIV prevalence rates in the world after Sub-Saharan Africa, there were a number of social challenges including insufficient participation of vulnerable groups such as men who have sex with men, and sex workers, in the response and legal frameworks which criminalised homosexuality and sex work. In this context the Alliance could not follow its model of partnering an existing national organisation, and so a country office with a regional mandate was opened in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 2003.
Despite these initial challenges, the Alliance Caribbean’s organisational capacity, programme quality, engagement with regional stakeholders and contribution to the regional response have all grown significantly over the last few years. It now has 40 staff responsible for four programmes funded by USAID, the UK Department for International Development and Caricom-World Bank. This allows it to contribute to HIV prevention, counselling and testing, strategic information, palliative care, involvement of the private sector and the reduction of stigma and discrimination. It currently implements programmes in Jamaica, Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis and distributes prevention commodities in another four Caribbean nations.
Alliance Caribbean set out its strategic framework in 2006 under the leadership of the current Director, Basil Williams. Its mission is to “realise universal access to sustainable HIV and AIDS prevention, care, treatment and support services with and for the people of the Caribbean,” through its “unique Caribbean culture and collective experience”.
The Alliance’s country office in Ukraine is also currently going through the transition process to become an independent linking organisation, which it is hoped will be complete by the end of 2008.
