Organizations with national reach learned to facilitate the AIDS Competence Process in DR-Congo

12-20 July, DR-Congo

In July, four learning events took place in DR-Congo in addition to the eleven learning events that took place in May and June. Representatives from five organizations with national reach were invited at the learning event in Kinshasa. Through these organizations the AIDS Competence Process has the potential to spread throughout the country.

45 participants attended the 8-days learning event in Kinshasa. Five national organizations participated: the Salvation Army, Memisa, Renadef (a women’s network), Nord Star Foundation (working with truckers) and Renoac (network of Community Based Organisations). 22 Community Based Organizations also attended including religious communities, staff from health zones, groups of People Living with HIV, policemen and representatives from the National Programme against AIDS.

“What I noted is that participants were interested to do something right from the start,” said Mimi Gerniers, from the Constellation. “This is because the team in Kinshasa invited the right people from the right organizations to attend the event.” On the second day, one of the participants even introduced a song about the ‘way to AIDS Competence’ that she had composed the night before.

The Salvation Army, amongst others, expressed a lot of enthusiasm for the approach. Representatives committed to apply the AIDS Competence Process in the organization and communities they work with.

Dieu-donné is one of the participants at the learning event in Kinshasa. He represented the Commission for life-long learning of Lay people in 13 parishes. “The workshop on SALT was magnificent! We went to the field and the visits went well. I learned a lot. I will transfer the SALT approach to my community. »

He then explained more about how he will integrate SALT into his usual approach. « We use an approach called ‘See-Judge-Act’. ‘See’ means that we analyze an event extensively. ‘Judge’ : we look at the event through the scriptures in the Bible. Then comes the last step ‘Act’ where we ask ourselves what to do. Here the animator suggests a solution. It would be better to ask communities to come up with the solution.
The SALT approach is more dynamic because the community itself talks. When the community decides, people are ready to mobilize a lot of efforts to fulfill their commitments. Therefore, we will integrate the SALT approach into the approach of ‘See-Judge-Act’.”

RDCCompétence and the support teams in each city have now started to accompany the facilitation teams in the field. They will also intensively support the facilitation teams within the organizations with national reach.