Since 2010 ASAP has worked with mothers2mothers (m2m) – an organisation employing over 1400 HIV-positive mothers in seven African countries. We’ve helped to identify and scale up m2m’s engagement with the global processes that have the most significant impact on the lives of pregnant women and mothers living with HIV.
As a result, m2m was able to play a central role in the Global Task Team that crafted Countdown to Zero: Global Plan towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children by 2015 and keeping their mothers alive (The Global Plan).
The Global Plan is a landmark event in efforts to build greater support and resources for women’s and children’s health globally.
With ASAP’s help, m2m’s participation has meant that the Global Plan includes a strong policy statement that Mentor Mothers – recent mothers who are trained and paid to support pregnant women and other mothers living with HIV — are a central force to achieve the goal of the virtual elimination of pediatric AIDS by 2015, and to keep mothers living with HIV alive.
m2m now plays a key role on the Global Steering Group that oversees the delivery of the Global Plan, as well as the Inter-Agency Task Team for PMTCT (IATT) that secures technical support to deliver the Plan in the 22 priority countries where action must escalate in order to achieve its goals.
With Presidents Bill Clinton and Goodluck Jonathan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and UNICEF and UNAIDS Directors Tony Lake and Michel Sidibe at her side, an HIV-positive mother working with m2m, Babalwa Mbono, launched the Global Plan at the UN in New York in June 2011.
This is a milestone for the engagement of mothers and pregnant women with HIV into the worldwide and national policy processes that can their lives.
In 2012, ASAP further supported m2m to develop a diversified resource mobilization strategy, linked to their increased advocacy. ASAP is also supporting m2m to secure stronger peer review of their work and to intensify the progression of HIV-positive women within the structure of m2m.
Client
Process
Since late 2010, ASAP’s Director has worked closely with the three co-founders of m2m, their leadership team and Board to undertake a substantial, systematic, scale-up of advocacy activities. Work included development of a strategic plan and identifying key intervention points. Most notable of these, the “right tables” to be at, so that m2m can maximise the impact of their time and efforts to leverage the best results with limited burden on staff whose principle responsibility is service delivery.
Links
mothers2mothers Feature in BMJ