Announcement: Documenting experiences workshop

[Sent to personal inbox, Madeleen Wegelin, 04 November 2008]

The Alliance Technical Support Hub (Manila) is pleased to invite someone of your organization to a workshop on writing skills for documentation of NGO experiences in HIV and AIDS in The Philippines.

Where and when

The workshop will be conducted in SEAMO INNOTECH convention centre located at Commonwealth Ave., Diliman Quezon City, Philippines. This centre is well equipped for workshops, it has guest rooms that are simple and comfortable. All participants will be staying overnight during the workshop in order to reduce travel time and to increase mutual learning and networking.

Dates are December 9-12.

Why do we have this workshop

In The Philippines, the HIV epidemic may be labeled as low prevalence, but is now categorized as hidden and growing. There are epidemics growing among the "most-at-risk-populations". The recent report of the Commission on AIDS in Asia recommends a focus of prevention programs on interventions that have been shown to work and that can reduce the maximum numbers of new infections. The Philippines as many countries in Asia face difficult public policy and legislative problems with regard to sex work, sexuality (including MSM, transgender, youth), and drug use. In addition, widespread poverty, and a general lack of access to effective health and welfare services by the poor and disadvantaged in both rural and urban areas, means that the challenges of developing targeted intervention programs, and ensuring coverage of vulnerable groups, are particularly acute. This also applies to HIV positive people, who need support not only to access care and treatment, but also for impact mitigation. There are community based organizations and NGOs in the country that have been able to carry out effective interventions, but these are rarely documented. If such interventions need to scale up, this documentation is necessary.

During the profiling visits to NGOs conducted by Alliance Technical Support Hub (Manila) staff in The Philippines and Indonesia, was indicated that lack of writing skills is a major obstacle for NGOs. They are not able to document the experiences in order to share and scale-up and it also reduces their ability to write proposals. Therefore for these NGOs writing skills is one of the Technical Support requirements that are their priority.

In holding this workshop, we will be able to start building up an inventory of good practices in The Philippines (and the University of the Philippines may be interested in doing a small publication on this).

For who is the workshop

The workshop is primarily aimed at staff of NGOs and CBOs, although staff of governmental or private organizations that serve the most at risk populations may also be participating if they have a successful program. Pre-condition is that the NGO/CBO has a project/program that is firmly established and has a positive outcome.

From such organization we select a staff on the basis of the following criteria:

• The participant has to be fully aware of all ins and outs of the project/program
• Ability to document the experiences in English (even if basic)
• Participant is likely to be involved in project and proposal writing in future

What are the objectives of the workshop:

• To enable the participants to write down and analyze their experience in a structured manner
• To have a draft document at the end of the workshop
• To exchange and learn from each others experience
• To use the documents for their own advocacy and proposal writing
• To use the documents to present an abstract in the ICAAP 2009

How are we going to conduct the workshop

The workshop will be facilitated by Leny Felix and Madeleen Wegelin of the Alliance Technical Support Hub (Manila). Both have a long term experience in conducting workshops and writeshops and have been working with NGOs on writing down their experiences and interventions before.

Each section (aim of the project, justification, context, planning process, implementation, resource requirements, monitoring, impact, challenges, lessons learnt) will be introduced by a facilitator and during a brainstorm we will make sure that every participant has a full understanding of why a section is necessary to be included and what items should be covered in the section. This is followed by breaking up in 5 groups of 4 participants in which each participant first has to tell the others what has happened in the project for the topic of this section. The others can ask for clarifications – this enables the writer to understand what has to be put on paper so outsiders understand. Then, each participant writes down the particular section in the workshop session, supported by the facilitators. For those that do not have a computer, these will be provided.

Participation fee

For all organizations belonging to or primarily working with the HIV positive community, a 100% grant is given by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance – this means the workshop is free for them. A number of other scholarships from the same source will be (partly) available for other organizations, depending on the financial capacity of their organization – this means that the workshop is free or partly free. We would advise interested NGOs to seek sponsorship for their attendance, especially those who need to travel from outside NCR. We will also endeavor to seek sponsorship for other sources.

The official fee for participation in the workshop is Php 15,710 per person and this covers training fee, accommodation, food, training kit, logistics etc. In addition, for participants coming from outside Manila, travel costs have to be added (this is not covered in this fee) and possibly two nights accommodation.

What to do next

If there is anyone in your organization that responds to the criteria and is interested to participate, please let me know and indicate if you have access to a sponsor. It would be good if you tell us what practice the person will be bringing to write down.