Chinelo's GNU Scope of Work (SOW)

Before we go far into the week, it is important to keep track of my Scope of Work
 GNU Fellow Scope of Work for Chinelo Odiakosa

Title: GNU Fellow:  Monitoring and Evaluation learning from and support to the Building Local Capacity Project (specifically the Migration Corridor).

LOE:  March 26th – April 20th 2012 (20 working days) in Southern Africa Region with the BLC Project

MENTORS: Kathryn Reichert, BLC Monitoring, Evaluation and Communications Director
 Zuzelle Pretorius, BLC Senior HIV Technical Advisor

LOCATION: Pretoria, Migration Corridor Zimbabwe (Beitbridge and Chirundu South)


The GNU fellowship

The GNU is a yearly fellowship opportunity awarded to two MSH staff that has shown a long term commitment to the field of Public Health. Successful interventions serve as a memorial for the three MSH staff that died in a ghastly plane crash outside Afghanistan – Amy, Carmen and Cristi. It is on this premise that the BLC project was selected as host country.

Initially, my fellowship Title of Activity & Rationale was that: In several projects the component of gender mainstreaming usually sounds like a herculean task especially because of its vast and imaginary form. Women and girls are still worst hit by untold vulnerabilities pervading them. GNU awarded fellow – Chinelo Odiakosa would wish to document engendered best practices inherent in a thriving HIV/Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) project and ascertain the mid-term program outcomes that the component of mainstreaming gender has had in the lives/wellbeing of OVC & caregivers’ especially female-headed households.

Due to the constraint of getting an MSH project centred on holistic OVC care and gender asides from the beneficiary’s project (CUBS, Nigeria) and BLC OVC project, there was a change of plan to engage the SA BLC project on HIV prevention to garner existing intervention models which can be replicated in other MSH country projects. The bottom line is to move with the pace of the BLC project and learn from existing interventions. (Good idea since I wish to spark up the fire in another direction other than OVC so we chose the BLC prevention project)

Purpose

To learn from and support the BLC project on monitoring, evaluation and communications especially on HIV prevention on mobile populations and affected communities

Background

The Building Local Capacity (BLC) for Delivery of HIV Services in Southern Africa Project is a five-year project (2010-2015) which contributes to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional HIV/AIDS Program (RHAP) goal to strengthen the overall sustainability, quality, and reach of HIV/AIDS interventions in the region. The project builds the capacity of governments and civil society entities in the Southern Africa Region, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, to implement policies and health services for those infected with and affected by HIV and AIDS. The three key program areas include care and support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), HIV prevention and community-based care.
Through the Migration Corridor Initiative, the BLC project is scaling up HIV prevention capacity building activities to civil society organizations along the North-South and East-South transport corridors in Southern Africa. These capacity building efforts will enhance improved, evidence based and sustainable HIV prevention services for mobile populations and the affected communities. North Star Alliance which is already operating Road Wellness Clinics (RWCs) along these transport corridors will be the primary partner to achieve this goal. Five initial sites, RWCs, at Beitbridge, Chirundu South, Chirundu North, Mwanza and Ngwenya have been identified to kick start the journey for quality HIV prevention services for mobile populations and the affected communities.
Participating in this project will be mutually beneficial for both Chinelo Odiakosa and BLC as the proposed assessments will generate information to enable the team to better understand the needs of the target populations and identify capacity needs of civil society organizations participating in the Migration Corridor Initiative. In the process, BLC will also be able to generate baseline information for its key HIV prevention indicators.

Key Activities with the fellow

• Orientation to the BLC project including monitoring, evaluation and communications systems and approaches (by Zuzelle).

• Conduct a literature review of partner organizations’ current prevention models, regional HIV prevention policies for mobile populations, other research or survey publication to understand current prevention strategies and models. (Guided by Zuzelle)

• Review North Star, PEPFAR and SADC HIV prevention and care indicators – and compare these indicators with the BLC PMP indicators (Guided by Jabulani and )

•Conduct focus group discussions and In-depth interview at North Star and/ one local site (Beitbridge) with affected community members (Truck drivers) establish how they are affected by the HIV pandemic (Led by Zuzelle)

• Develop a powerpoint brief of the preliminary findings highlighting key potential partners, their capacities and capacity needs, strengths and weaknesses of current HIV prevention models, keys prevention needs of affected communities and key recommendations (by Chinelo)

• Share a powerpoint presentation of the CUBS-Nigeria Gender Assessment Framework, CUBS Organizational Development Tool, CUBS Peer Education Model and the IGA intervention with BLC team in Pretoria (By Chinelo)



Deliverables:

• Literature review report
• Report with recommendations for indicators
• Trip report
• Consolidated Migration corridor project report
• Brainstorm on incorporating Gender perspectives into HIV prevention