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In the past decade the global financial assistance for AIDS
responses increased tremendously and the donor community provided
greater resources to community responses. Yet little is known about
the global magnitude of these resources and their allocation among
HIV and AIDS activities and services. To address this knowledge
gap, this report pulls together evidence from several different
sources (donor data bases, surveys of civil society organisations,
country funding profiles) to determine, among other things, how
funds are reaching civil society and community-based organisations,
how these funds are being used, and the degree to which these
organisations rely on other sources of funding. The analysis
suggests that funding flows have increased dramatically for civil
society organisations (CSOs), reaching at least $690 million per
year on average during the period 2003 - 2009. However, much
smaller funding is reaching organisations at local level. The
report documents the impact achieved by this funding.
Traditionally, civil society organisations have been perceived at
times to be providers of humanitarian aid, innovators in
implementing responses adapted to local needs, or inefficient
actors diverting public funds from more effective uses. The report
argues that current evidence shows that community responses play a
useful complementary role to national AIDS programs that has been
achieved with relatively little funding. Contrary to a widespread
view, the report highlights that community responses add resources
to national programs. In Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, substantial
mobilisation of resources in the form of volunteers are mobilised
by communities. There is a strong risk that in the current
environment of increased resource scarcity, prevention programs
implemented by civil society organisations would be cut unless
there is strong evidence of value for money being generated.
Community-based organisations are ill equipped to answer that
question, but there is scope for improving the results that they
generate. The report argues that improving coordination with
national programs, strengthening consistency between local
activities and HIV epidemics, building stronger network of civil
society organisations, and mobilising sustainable funding are the
most important ways for community responses to move forward and
address the challenges faced by community responses.
Investing in Communities Achieves Results fills an important gap in
the global knowledge on community level results and resources
related to HIV and AIDS. While communities, in spite of their
limited resources, have played a key role in the HIV/AIDS response,
their contributions and innovative approaches to prevention,
treatment, care, and support have not always been the focus of
systematic and rigorous evaluations. To address this deficit, a
series of studies-including evaluations in Burkina Faso, India,
Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe-were
undertaken over a three-year period (early 2009 to early 2012),
helping to build a robust pool of evidence on the effects of
community-based activities and programmes. A unique feature of this
multicountry evaluation was the collaboration between two
international organisations (the World Bank and the United
Kingdom's Department for International Development) and a major
civil society network (the U.K. Consortium on AIDS and
International Development). Other attributes that contributed to
the successful outcome were the sustained consultation process with
civil society and stakeholders at the local, national, and global
levels, and the collaboration among high-calibre,
multi-disciplinary researcher teams. The book's findings are
promising. At varying levels, depending on the country context, the
HIV response in communities was shown to improve knowledge and
behaviour and increase the use of health services- and even
decrease HIV incidence. Evidence on social transformation was more
mixed, with community groups found to be effective only in some
settings. Each study in the evaluation provides a partial view of
how communities shape the local response; however, taken together
they constitute a significant pool of rigorous evidence on the
contributions of communities, community groups, and civil society
to the national and global HIV and AIDS response. The studies
suggest that communities have produced significant results at the
local level, which contribute to outcomes at the national level.
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