Close liaison and discussions with Peace Corps resulted in the identification of a Peace Corps volunteer who had served in Namibia to extend her stay for six months and assist the Multi-Purpose Center in its start-up activities
Inter-Agency Collaboration in the
Fight Against HIV/AIDS
During the past few months, three U.S. agencies in Namibia, the Department of Defense through the American Embassy, USAID, and Peace Corps, have formed a collaborative partnership and are pooling resources in order to provide urgently needed HIV/AIDS services in the coastal town of Walvis Bay. The U.S. support is being used to build a multi-purpose center that will offer counseling to HIV/AIDS affected persons and provide training to center staff to plan and carry out awareness raising activities for youth, women, and the unemployed.
Construction of the Walvis Bay Multi-Purpose Center, funded by Disaster Relief Fund of the Department of Defense (DOD) is nearing completion. DOD staff at the American Embassy had assisted USAID in identifying the funding in order to build this much-needed facility. In Walvis Bay, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rates exceed 25 percent and the mayor of the town is highly motivated about conducting a vigorous and effective campaign to address the problem. She had initially contacted USAID to introduce and run some intervention programs for the municipality, but quickly realized that there were virtually no suitable venues to conduct such activities, to offer counseling, or to provide the required training of home based care providers. The DOD funds have thus been able to meet an immediate need, enabling the municipality to construct a building that incorporates both large activity rooms and smaller counseling cubicles. The DOD also located redundant furniture in facilities around the world and is shipping it to Walvis Bay to furnish the center. As this multi-purpose venue is located in the center of the highest populated part (formerly township) of Walvis Bay, it is easily accessible to a large segment of the beneficiary population and will serve a wide cross-section of the community.
USAID has been involved with the project from the start. Initially, USAID helped set up a local steering committee, consisting of key stakeholders, and assisted it to formalize "operations guidelines" for the center's management. Through the mission's HIV/AIDS implementing partner, Family Health International, the steering committee selected and hired a center director. Once it became evident to the steering committee that one staff person alone was not going to be sufficient to manage a center that was envisioned to be operational from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm, USAID became engaged in solving that problem. Close liaison and discussions with Peace Corps resulted in the identification of a Peace Corps volunteer who had served in Namibia to extend her stay for six months and assist the Multi-Purpose Center in its start-up activities. Subsequently, Peace Corps has agreed to assign one of their new recruits, due for placement in September, to work for a full two years at the center.
With the center almost completed, the center director hired, and a volunteer committed to a community-based approach to HIV/AIDS prevention, the Walvis Bay Multi-Purpose Center is envisioned to be a hub of activity in the near future, a place where anyone from the town can come for information and training and receive support and counseling on HIV/AIDS. One U.S. agency on its own could not have accomplished this; it took the combined efforts and resources of all three agencies and their shared vision and commitment to respond in a meaningful way to one community's request.
