The Chronicle Newspaper (Lilongwe)

November 21, 2005
Gregory Gondwe
Lilongwe

CARE Malawi has changed its approach in the fight against HIV/AIDS by engaging a livelihoods approach, based on partnership concept through its 'Communities Responding to HIV/AIDS Epidemic (CORE)' project initiative.

The CORE initiative is pioneering practical approaches on how organisations at the grass root level can mainstream HIV/AIDS in their livelihoods interventions in order to contribute towards mitigating the long term effects of HIV/AIDS in Malawi by applying a livelihoods approach based on the partnership to HIV/AIDS programming.

CARE Malawi Acting Project Manager Clement Bisai told The Chronicle in an interview that they decided to change the approach after realising that a lot of HIV/AIDS mitigation efforts were only dealing with the prevention, awareness and home based care. "On one hand, if you have HIV/AIDS, your livelihood goes down while on the other hand if your livelihood base is low there is a high chance that you can easily get infected with the HIV/AIDS, similarly if you are both HIV positive and have a poor livelihood, chances of survival are very slim," said Bisai.

Bisai said during the one year of project implementation, CARE and its partners, 10 Community Based Organisation (CBO) that received grants, drew a number of good lessons and better practices on mainstreaming HIV/AIDS into livelihood programs and vice versa.

CARE organised a conference last Tuesday under the theme; 'The Flavours of Mainstream' in what Bisai said was aimed at sharing lessons and better practices with other stakeholders. "The theme of the conference is based on the experiences and lessons learnt by CARE and 10 community based organisations around the project cycle on how to design, implement, monitor and evaluate an HIV/AIDS program through a livelihoods approach or a livelihood program through HIV/AIDS approach," he said.

CARE Malawi has been implementing the project in Lilongwe in Senior Chiefs Malili, Tsabango and Chadza under the banner of 'Partnering for a Livelihoods Response to HIV/AIDS in Malawi' as 'a learning pilot initiative. It has run since February and will be winding up on November 30 this year.

During the time the project has been running, CARE told the conference that it made documentary visits to establish on how the organisations were implementing their activities to ensure that livelihood objectives are able to reduce risk and impact of HIV/AIDS upon households. "It is coming out very clear that the type of organisation, its background hence core business (was) one of the determining factors on how mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS would be done and its nature at community level," says the write up distributed at the conference.

Using this mode, one of the 10 CBOs known as Chiwamba, a livelihood-based self-help organisation formed to improve agricultural productivity and economic development of the members belonging to a cooperative qualified.

Chiwamba has introduced innovative ways to mainstream HIV/AIDS in their traditional livelihoods work that never considered HIV/AIDS before the CORE initiative small grants program. "As a cooperative, we never thought about HIV/AIDS before since we just concentrated on our business but with CORE, we are now aware that our cooperative (as well as its) members are also at risk and there are ways we can address HIV/AIDS issues surrounding our communities," said the group's Secretary Briton Chanda.

Another one was Edzi Kumudzi Association of Malawi (EKAM), which is a service provider with a goal of preventing the further spread of HIV and improving the quality of life of those who have been infected and affected.

EKAM's traditional mainstreaming of livelihoods is targeting the increasing of food, nutrition and income security in ways that improve options and resilience whilst reducing infections. "As much as targeting has to be based on assessment of vulnerability, identified through a combination of livelihoods security ranking and situation analysis; it has been observed that organisations can either change who to target or target the same people but with modified interventions as they embark on mainstreaming," says CARE in its write up.

It says EKAM decided to slightly shift its previous traditional practice of targeting those at the most risk of contracting HIV and those infected, using the chronically ill proxy indicator and orphans to the most vulnerable in the community by relying on vulnerability assessment and analysis without any deliberate link to HIV/AIDS. "Its worthy noting however that the most vulnerable members are also at most risk because of inability to access safe secure incomes especially in the context of orphaned girls and widows," commented Bisai.

Chiwamba Cooperative was initially targeting root and tuber crops farmers and decided to start addressing the causes and consequences of HIV/AIDS in their programs by targeting the orphans and the most chronically ill.

One beneficiary is 18-year-old, form 3, orphan Nelson Manda who for the past four years has been caring for his chronically ill mother and has a younger 11-year-old sister attending standard eight at a boarding school. "Chiwamba would not have allowed me to be in the cooperative if it was not for their consideration to assist me because of my situation at home. I earn enough money through the sales of the vines that I am able to support my family and pay school fees for my young sister," says Manda.

He has a small garden where he is multiplying sweet potatoes vines and also participates in bakery initiatives.