Communities Together to Control HIV

HOPE Humana in South East district work alongside with many people in the communities on the Acting Together to Control HIV (CATCH) approach. The UNAIDS funded the piloting of this community driven, bottom up approach that National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA) plan to scale up. HPP welcomed the opportunity to assist the communities to drive more activities in response to HIV and AIDS.  HPP facilitates that communities in South East district identify their challenges and create and contribute to solutions accordingly. Communities become agents of change in their own locations, empowering them to work together towards achieving the target of zero new HIV infections. The approach is spearheaded by the chiefs (dikgosi, traditional leaderships) in each place. A part of the plan is for communities to erect visible dash boards for everybody to follow specific measurable results and changes. The pilot started in June 2015.
 

As shown in the chart above, households receive visits where they are telling the challenges their locality faces.  They are then invited to a kgotla meeting with fellow community members for them to form local action groups that establish a dream, a vision and priorities and elaborate a plan of action. These groups continuously organise actions in their community, evaluate the actions that were carried out, plan for new actions, organise the actions and so forth. The idea is that the first community action groups inspire more and more community members to form groups. The start might be slow, and then the actions gain momentum over time. In the next pages is a report on some of the earliest outcomes of the CATCH approach.