Hivos’ work is aimed at structurally alleviating poverty, with an emphasis on civil society building and sustainable economic development. This means that Hivos not only focuses on improving people’s living conditions, it also aims at removing the root causes of poverty and oppression. To achieve this, Hivos uses a threefold strategy in which direct poverty alleviation, the strengthening of civil society and advocacy with regard to decision making reinforce each another.

The STAR programme is part of Hivos’ ICT & Media programme, which has a strong focus on using ICTs strategically in support of the core objectives of Hivos partner organisations so that they become more effective and efficient at achieving their objectives. Through experiences to date Hivos has learnt that effective use of ICTs leads to improved communication with key target groups, increased access to up-to-date and relevant information, and increased knowledge-sharing capacity. This has also been confirmed through results of the STAR programme.

The STAR programme aims to increase the capacity of Hivos-partner civil society organisations working on HIV/AIDS and micro-finance issues to effectively apply ICTs to attain their goals. The programme started in September 2005 and will end in December 2009.  Twenty organisations from six African countries (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia) have been involved in the programme.

The STAR programme involved a range of approaches that were innovative for Hivos at the time. Some of these innovations have subsequently been embedded in the work of the ICT and Media programme as a result of lessons learnt. Experimenting with a public-private partnership in implementing ICT capacity-building  meant drawing on Hivos’ strengths and experiences of using ICTs effectively, matched with the experience of a Dutch commercial telecom partner, KPN in a Public-Private Partnership (PPP).

As a result of the skills and capacities developed through the programme, Hivos partner organisations were able to experiment with and implement a range of communications innovations that enabled more effective and efficient approaches in support of their objectives.

Other innovative STAR ICT projects initiated and developed on the basis of needs identified by participating partner NGOs included the development of a communication toolkit (to enable communications skills development beyond the individuals that STAR could physically reach), development of an SMS Bulktool (to easily send behaviour change and campaign messages to a large number of recipients), establishment of an ICT centre for youth ICT skills development and using mobile telephone games to create awareness on HIV/AIDS.

Key characteristics of the STAR programme to date have been skills-development and knowledge-sharing. Through small and large group training, exchange visits and individual mentoring and guidance, participating organisations have been made aware of available ICT tools, their uses in locally appropriate ways, and encouraged to identify which tools are best suited to their realities by drawing on experiences and lessons of other similar organisations.  

Another STAR project introduced an open source management information system (MIS) at a number of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in East Africa drawing on an MIS developed by the Grameen Foundation (Bangladesh). A lighter version of this software is currently under development to cater for offline processing for those organisations with limited connectivity. A local IT companies from Kenya has been in charge of the introduction of the MIS and working on the development of the lighter version with the Dutch ICT service company Logica, who have been providing technical and management support to the project.