First Regional HIV/AIDS workshop

The workshop was the first of two regional workshop to increase awareness about the strategic use of ICTs among HIV/AIDS NGO's. The workshop benificiaries included all Hivos HIV/AIDS partners in the region. These organisations range from national umbrella organisations and organisations of people living with HIV, to community based organisations. In total nineteen participants from nine countries attended the workshop.

The workshop covered three days and participants were grouped thematically to encourage sharing of resources, knowledge and experiences. The programme consisted of three elements:

1.    Developing an effective communication strategy
2.    Demonstration from organisations using ICTs strategically
3.    Demonstration and usage of ICTs tools

The evaluation of the workshop among the participants indicated that the workshop has increased awareness and understanding of the strategic use of ICTs and that the workshop was of relevance to their work. An example of comments received from participants a few months after the workshop:

Almost everyone at SAfAIDS is on skype now. Our resource centres in Zambia, Namibia and Botswana are now skypping and it has made our communication a lot easier and cheaper. We got 10 headsets from HDN and we have distributed them to our resource centres. Our Director was at the UNGASS meeting and she was able to talk with the office on skype from New York. Thought I would let you know how popular skype has become at SAfAIDS.