Building Capacity

HIV-related stigma and discrimination hampers the effective prevention, treatment and care of people living with the virus. ICRW worked with Pact Cambodia’s REACH project to customize a toolkit for communities designed to combat HIV stigma and discrimination and adapted to reflect local realities. ICRW and Pact also created two new toolkits to address stigma and discrimination against entertainment workers and men who have sex with men. Material for the new modules was developed through participatory workshops with local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other stakeholders. These local NGOs field-tested the toolkits, providing feedback for finalization of the materials before widely distributing the toolkits.

ICRW is a partner on AIDSTAR-One, which provides rapid technical assistance to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. government country teams to build effective, well-managed, and sustainable HIV and AIDS programs and to promote new leadership in the global campaign against HIV. AIDSTAR-One leverages the expertise of its diverse partner organizations to provide targeted assistance in knowledge management, program implementation support, technical leadership, program sustainability and strategic planning.

Through this partnership, ICRW draws from its expertise on gender and women's vulnerability to HIV to develop gender-responsive HIV programming. ICRW also provides technical leadership in the area of preventing alcohol-related HIV risk.

Global stakeholders recognize that HIV/AIDS policies and programs must advance gender equality in order to effectively slow the spread of HIV. However, few concrete tools have been developed to guide policymakers and programmers in creating gender-responsive strategies at the national level. ICRW is collaborating with partners from civil society, government and donor organizations in Uganda and Cambodia to demonstrate how to develop national HIV/AIDS plans that address the unique needs and constraints of women and men.

In each country, ICRW is analyzing current national policies, strategies and programs to identify strengths and gaps in addressing gender-based vulnerabilities in the context of HIV and AIDS. The project team also is collaborating with a core group of government, donor and civil society representatives to form an advisory board. The board will use findings from the analysis to create recommendations and a plan for strengthening attention to gender in the national response to HIV and AIDS. The advisory board also will host a series of meetings to launch the action plan and garner support for its implementation.

ICRW is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its partners to strengthen their attention to gender in various agricultural projects in Africa and South Asia. ICRW reviews project designs and advises the foundation on how to address the distinct issues that affect the work of women and men farmers. ICRW also guides implementing organizations on ways to improve outreach to women farmers.

For example, ICRW provided recommendations to TechnoServe in Kenya and Tanzania in an effort to increase the incomes of small-scale farmers by improving the quality of their coffee in order to sell it in global markets. ICRW’s recommendations included approaches to guarantee that women benefit from the program along with men - such as having full membership in farmers’ cooperatives - increasing their leadership opportunities, and receiving payment for their labor on the coffee crop.

ICRW worked with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the German development agency, and its private sector partners with helping cotton farmers in sub-Saharan Africa increase their yields and improve the quality of their crops. ICRW assessed all aspects of the project to ensure that men and women equally benefit from project services, and that women are paid for their labor.

By collaborating with private ginning companies and cotton producer associations, the project is providing farmers access to resources such as fertilizer and pesticides, as well as farming and business training to help increase the value of their returns from cotton. Producing higher quality cotton will allow farmers to sell their crop to new and broader markets.