THE ELSA PLATFORM

Activities in France

> ELSA Executive Committee meetings        
Those meetings occur monthly and gather one representative of each member associations and the co-ordination staff. They are an opportunity to :

• discuss the activities and decide collectively of the upcoming activities (internships, missions, etc.) of the Platform
• exchange between the members in order to better know each others’ agendas and improve the co-ordination of activities : presentation of specific actions, information about field missions (past and coming), discussion about a specific partner, agendas for partners’ visits in France, etc.
• Relay information from partners in the South on specific issues (for example, the access to international fundings for local CBOs)

> Technical work groups
The technical work groups include referent people from member associations ; they focus on a specific activity of the Platform in order to improve the process and capitalize on the best practices emerging from the partnership framework (ex : financial follow-up procedures, trainings, South-South internships)

> Country meetings and thematic meetings
Those meetings are organized depending on current events in a specific country (concerns about one or several partners in this country, political crisis…) or on a specific issue at least once in a trimester. They are open for all the actors concerned by the subject discussed.
They aim at :

• for the country meetings: better understand who are the different stakeholders, help co-ordinate the interventions, find common positions with the community actors...
• for the thematic meetings: better understand a specific situation, help collective positions to emerge taking the vision of actors from the South into account.

> Pleading training
ELSA from its origin had the opportunity to organize training sessions in the South and in the North. We organized the first pleading training session in Paris in 2005. This session was unanimously appreciated by the trainees and the partner associations who called for its renewal. It will occur again in Paris, where the trainees can have the opportunity to meet a wide panel of lobbyists in the fight against AIDS but also in other causes with different approaches.
One session with 10 trainees should take place every year.

Activities in African countries

> South-South internships (50 interns in 3 years)
In order to articulate the interventions, but also to value the community expertise, ELSA offers South-South internship opportunities to the active members of the partner associations. Those indivdual internships allow the intern to immerge in a social and cultural context close to the one he faces every day, to observe the practices of associative colleagues, exchange on their own practices, etc.
In addition to improving the intern’s knowledge, the internships are also an opportunity for the hosting structure to question their own practices.

The thematics of internships are set up all along the project in accordance with the partners’ wishes.
They may include :

• the associative structure issues (human ressources, accounting, etc.)
• the prevention strategies
• the activities of global care for PLWAs
  

A call for candidates is planned to occur every year.

In order to improve, structure and capitalize on the South-South internship device, it is planned to elaborate a handbook detailing for each phase of the process what is done, by who, according to which procedures, using which tools. This work will be done collectively by members of the Executive Committee, ressource persons, and former interns and mentors.

> Support missions (3 missions in 3 years)
These missions aim at strenghthening the capacities on-site for a partner association in a specific field.
They involve 2 people (1 from the North, 1 from the South) with an expertise on the issue at stake.
After a pre-diagnosis, the mission occurs in 2 weeks along the following process :

• analysis of the needs through interviews and observation
• training session: theoretical inputs and case studies
• support in the implementation of the newly acquired knowledge : observation and assistance
• shared outcomes analysis of the improvements and the limits of the mission.

This new support device will be formalized into a handbook by a work group including members of the Executive Committee, African partners and external ressources. It will be tested throughout 3 missions between 2010 and 2011.

> Gatherings (4 gatherings in 3 years)

It seemed interesting to us that former interns and mentors could get together in order to share and capitalize on their experience in South-South internships.  Four gathering sessions will take place between 2009 and 2011 in an African country with around 10 people from African partner associations, some members of ELSA and ressource persons.
Those meetings will allow :

• to assess the outcome of the past internship programme in order to improve future programmes;
• to capitalize on the internships and missions as capacity building tools (collective redaction of a handbook).

> International conferences (3 conferences in 3 years)
Various meetings of actors in the fight against AIDS are organized periodically : world conferences, regional conferences, etc. They gather thousands of people and explore a vast range of issues related to HIV/AIDS : therapeutical state of the art, presentation of care good practices...
It is important that actors from the South could take part to those meetings so they can improve :

• their knowledge (epidemic and actors updates),
• their comprehension of international issues,
• their visibility towards other actors.

In the ELSA project, those conferences are an opportunity for visibility and for meeting and exchanges between partners. It also offers a chance to organize a satellite meeting, a presentation of ELSA, or posters and abstracts.

The ELSA conferences programme allows to take in charge the participation of 3 people (1 from the South, one from the North and one from the Platform co-ordination) every year (9th AIDS Impact Conference in Gaborone, Bostwana, sept. 2009; 5th francophonic confernce on HIV/AIDS, Morocco 2010; World AIDS Conference, Vienna, 2010...)