October fourth was my first day of work with Environment Africa, and they tossed me right into the thick of things. I went with Douglas and Lorren, two of the Environment Africa workers, to Lubancho House in Hwange for the annual Hwange district meeting and workshop for planning the distribution of AIDS funds for 2011. Hwange, the town, is not close to Victoria Falls at 110 km away (close to the border of Hwange National Park), but Victoria Falls and the entire northwestern quadrant of Zimbabwe are in the Hwange district, including fifty-two distinct local areas, making it necessary for us to travel the long distance to the meeting. Since the two AIDS funds are only broken down by province, the goal of this meeting was to come up with a comprehensive district plan for Hwange district for all AIDS funds for 2011.
The meeting attendees were thirty people representing numerous organizations and locations from around the district including the police, various churches and religious organizations, the local legislature, UNICEF, Save the Children, Environment Africa, and others.
The first day of the meeting focused on deciding the distribution and projects the NAC (National AIDS Committee) fund will support in 2011. These projected projects are based on the previous years plan (the 2010 plan), with baseline numbers calculated from the current levels of success reached in 2010 and a projection of what numbers should be reached by the end of the year. In this way, all of the projects will hopefully have both realistic projections, as well as at least equal if not better implementation from each year to the next. Generally, the NAC fund is used for projects in either all the districts, or for the majority of developed districts and areas.
The second day was similar to the first, but focused on the Global fund, as opposed to the NAC fund. As the NAC fund focuses on developed districts with towns and cities, the Global fund is directed more towards rural districts. There is some overlap between the funds, and another task of the meeting was to sort out which fund was supporting overlapping projects. The final step of the meeting was to plan which projects outside organizations (including E. Africa) would be undertaking and funding in Hwange district, separate from the NAC and Global funds.
Both days, they broke the attendees down into groups based on the specialization of certain projects and members. The four main categories were prevention, mitigation, care and treatment, and coordination. These groups then calculated the projected projects for 2011 and their budgets, the results were then presented to the group as a whole, discussed, and recorded to be approved at the national level. I worked mainly with the mitigation-planning group, and I got a fairly good broad-spectrum view of the current interventions being done for AIDS prevention and treatment in the area on the district level.
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