Why Aidsnet?

- Improving NGOs' knowledge and experience sharing - good as well as bad!

We live in a world that becomes more and more networked. Many of us are already members of formal and informal network set up after meetings, conferences and joint projects. At Aidsnet, we share the belieg that we are able to do a better job if we work together than separetely.

Aidsnet is a network of NGOs and rsearch institutions  working with international HIV/AIDS activities. Our goal is to help improve the quality of the danish onterventions within prevention and spreading of HIV/AIDS, care, support and treatment of people affected by AIDS or infected with HIV.  

We aim to do this by:

• Strengthening information sharing and exchange of experiences between peer organisations.
• Increase the institutional and proffessional capacity to integrate HIV/AIDS activities in the development assistance.

The network operates within the framework of the special UN General Assembly on HIV/AIDS  (UNGASS) held in New York in June 2001 (Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS [PDF]). Similary the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in September 1994 and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs' action plan for Denmark's international intervention against HIV/AIDS 2001 set out the guidelines for Aidsnet's activities.

Goals

Our goal is to strengthen the capacity building and compentencies of our members. This applies to the following areas in particular:

• Strengthen organisational and institutional capacity to integrate HIV/AIDS in the overall development and relief aid strategies.
• Strengthen programme's capacity to achieve better planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of activities.
• Strengthen the capacity to implement targeted advocacy activities.

In this context, capacity is understood as the transfer of knowledge, approaches and competencies, partly as skills and partly as the will to act and to make a difference.

We have focused our efforts on the following activities:

• Ideas on how to integrate HIV/AIDS activities into a sexual and reproductive health and rights-based approach.
• Exchange of policy papers, strategies, methods and other professional tools used by members in their daily work and which may be relevant to peer organiations.
• Examples of best practices on how to use child specific analysis methods when working with e.g. orphans or HIV-infected children as target group.
• Tools for involving young people in HIV/AIDS prevention activities in a meaningful way.
• Methods to involve HIV-infected people in prevention activities to counter stigmatisation among HIV-infected people and their relatives.
• Use of research-based knowledge in the preparation and evaluation of HIV/AIDS projects in an improved cooperation between relevant research institutions and NGOs.
• Methods to carry out information and awareness activities on HIV/AIDS among targeted groups.

Grunden til, at man har valgt netop disse områder, er, at de allerede nu optræder som prioriterede indsatsområder for en lang række medlemmer. Netværket vil netop her have en særlig mulighed for at kunne bidrage konkret til organisationernes fortløbende arbejde.

Outputs

Every year in February, Aidsnet submits a status report to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The report contains an account of the activities we have carried out during the year, our evalution of the activities and lessons learnt.