Integration of HIV/AIDS activities with food and nutrition support in ...

expected to provide their services for free until the situation stabilizes, which can be difficult
when they too are struggling to feed their families. Second, provision of health-related services
may be hampered by the provider’s need to devote time to activities that earn food or income.
Third, the need for volunteers to address HIV/AIDS in refugee communities is new, and many
such communities do not have people doing HIV/AIDS-related work. Agencies must build the
capacity of community groups – often young people – to conduct AIDS prevention activities,
and may need to provide temporary incentives to these people until the community itself understands
the importance of the activity and is able and willing to support it financially.
Food and related resources may be used as an incentive to support HIV/AIDS prevention efforts
in two main ways:
Strategy 19 Support to community health volunteers engaged in HIV/AIDS prevention activities or in caring for
PLWHA and HIV/AIDS-affected families
Strategy 20 Support to community awareness and mobilization activities of PLWHA by providing food for events
The exact form that the incentive should take depends on the local context. The incentive
selected should be valuable to the individuals being rewarded. Where access to food is limited,
health volunteers may be happy to receive food. However, where access to food is adequate,
because a full ration is distributed to the entire population, or because economic activities are
well established, other incentives may be preferable. These could include eligibility for incomegenerating
projects, agricultural projects, microcredit projects, community banking and animal
rotation schemes. Groups to target include community volunteers and PLWHA engaged in
HIV/AIDS prevention. Where resources allow, it is also possible to provide food to all participants
in HIV/AIDS prevention activities as a way to promote community participation. Food
should not be perceived as an alternative to cash payment of health workers where appropriate
budgets exist.
Provision of incentives is a short-term intervention designed to allow vital health care to be
delivered in the community. Just as incentives reward and motivate health volunteers engaged
in HIV/AIDS prevention (e.g., peer educators, condom distributors), they can acknowledge
the valuable efforts of community health volunteers who provide health, nutritional or psychosocial
support to PLWHA. In all cases, developmental activities are preferable to short-term
humanitarian assistance, and external incentives should be phased out with the establishment
of community support mechanisms.
Agency staff should work with participants to identify appropriate incentives, being mindful
not to undermine long-term commitment to the work, and to consider livelihood-based incentives
where possible and appropriate.
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