The United Nations Volunteers [UNV] in collaboration with MONUSCO HIV/AIDS Unit is paving the way for Non-Governmental Organizations [NGOs] and civil society organizations (CSO) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC] by providing a bold approach to combating and managing HIV and AIDS through lessons from training workshops.
It is obvious that the effective fight against HIV and AIDS depend on a trained and motivated workforce to carry out the services needed to achieve tangible results in this area.
In the DRC, MONUSCO HIV/AIDS Unit is working with Government partners, NGOs, and the civil society to help the private sector establish sustainable preventive surveillance in the domain of HIV and AIDS.
To achieve this goal, they support a wide range of training and mentorship activities, including helping NGOs to establish their own training programmes and to foster sustainability of training efforts.
As prevention remains one of the highest priorities of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping [DPKO] in trouble regions of the world, UNV and MONUSCO, in a joint initiative, recently organized a training workshop for 25 representatives of local NGOs and CSO members of the Volunteers’ Platform in Goma, the North Kivu’s capital in DRC. Under UNV coordination, the Volunteers’ Platform gathers CSOs and NGOs active in North Kivu. The Platform is aimed at strengthening networking between its members, their visibility through common activities and strengthening their capacities to implement sustainable development projects.
The workshop covered among other topics, basic knowledge on HIV and AIDS, risk reduction counseling, voluntary testing policies, Rights and duties of people living with HIV, fight against stigma and discrimination relating to HIV etc.
The workshop organized by UNV and facilitated by MONUSCO HIV/AIDS Unit, was also aimed at equipping participants with the necessary knowledge and skills to ensure access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support services and raise awareness in their community.
‘‘The lessons we have learned are interesting and we hope the training, together with the skills imparted, will make a timely intervention within our community’’, says one participant.
According to her, the skills acquired at the workshop would also contribute to a more compassionate approach by community workers when dealing with the affected and infected persons.
‘’If we, community workers and other stakeholders in this domain can adopt the HIV and AIDS management as presented during our training, the infection rate would go down’’, she recalls, confirming that henceforth they would be able to handle stigma and discrimination reasonably in their various communities.
The voluntary partnership came to fruition through the initiative of Alexandra de Bournonville, Public Information Officer of the UNV programme in DRC, who said UNV was thrilled at the completion of the training for the representatives of the NGOs, who will implement effective HIV and AIDS in their communities.
‘’We could still organize more trainings of this kind’’, she says. ‘’Although the time was a bit short, I am satisfied with the content and the way the training was conducted’’, she added, confirming that similar workshops will be organized elsewhere in the near future.
At the end of the training workshop, some participants presented individual recommendations, including more training on how to improve psychological support to HIV positive persons and more lessons on how to tackle the issue of stigma and discrimination affecting those living with HIV.
Obviously, there is hope that participants will use the adequate knowledge acquired during the training to expand their activities to the entire North Kivu Province and ultimately elsewhere in other communities in the DRC.
