Summary

SCORE program works with Ministry of Heath Rwanda at the District level as they implement the HIV-AIDs awareness as well as strengthening the underprivilage on how to over come the epidemic. They also look to improve family planning, maternal health as well as general primary health care.

Program goals

The overall objective of this program is to enhance the community-driven response to reduce the incidence and mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS in four Districts (Bugaragara, Kabare, Kahi and Nyagatare Town) in Umutara province.

Key program components

Rwanda has an estimated HIV prevalence rate of 13.7% of its adult population. The scale of the social and economic impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Rwanda is increasing, affecting all categories of community groups. Communities in Rwanda understand HIV/AIDS is threatening their health but also achievements in poverty reduction are threatened because the pandemic kills mostly the breadwinner and leaves many orphans to be cared for by the community. The response needs to be multi-sectoral with an open-ended participatory approach. SCORE-AIDS supports a holistic approach to causal and trend analysis of HIV/AIDS and socio- economic impact, rights and responsibilities and the information generated would be linked to the development of community response plans.

• Enhance communities economic capacity and solidarity to respond to the impact of HIV/AIDS through nurturing community managed planning processes.

• Maintain flexibility in exploration of ideas and approaches to capitalize on community knowledge and practices in designing response plans.

• Link the response plans with longer-term interventions in order to reduce chronic vulnerability, and to improve the sustainability of the initiative.

• Recruit participation of and network with local authorities, socio- economic institutions and Health/ HIV/AIDS service delivery institutions to support community groups to improve their productive capacity that would strengthen the response plans for sustainability of the interventions.

• Adopt a learning approach that will incorporate experiences into CARE general approach to community development.

The following results are expected at the end of project implementation:

• 30 CBOs and at least 10 PLWA Associations (among whom 500 CBO members and 500 PLWA are targeted) selected and trained to implement awareness raising campaigns on HIV/AIDS with active participation of local authorities

• Community response plans are developed and implemented based on analysis of the causes of HIV/AIDS and responsibilities for addressing such causes

• 500 PLWA have access to ARVs; Community savings enable access to mutuelles and, in turn, ARVs; Community volunteers are strengthened to provide quality services (prevention, mentoring, treatment, care and support) to PLWA