twinning against AIDS Final Report: The Findings

3.1 Is twinning important and why?

A large majority of respondents felt that improving the ability of those involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS to exchange information, skills and experiences was very important and that twinning was an important strategy to accomplish this.

One of the central findings of the process is the diversity of both challenges that organisations think can be met through twinning relationships and the equally diverse and happily often complimentary lists of information, skills and experience available to share.

A few examples of challenges that respondents felt could be addressed by twinning:

Educating truck drivers

Building multi-national consensus on AIDS related issues

Building AIDS awareness in a low incidence country

Gaining a better understanding of AIDS at the grassroots

Finding ways to systematically put information together so that it is not lost

Finding more effective and efficient ways to disseminate information

Maintaining staff morale

Providing appropriate training to volunteers

Learning to lobby government for policy change and resources

A few examples of information, skills or experiences that respondents offered to share:

Establishing and sustaining volunteers at the community level

Working with governments and others in cross border programmes

Reviewing and drafting legislation

Building networks and coalitions

Advocacy against stigma and for access to care and treatment

Prevention in rural agricultural settings

Partnering with the media

Experience leading national CBO AIDS coalition

Prevention of mother to child transmission programmes

Even within these very short lists relative to the much longer ones from the raw data, it is clear that there is significant diversity in terms of needs and resources - so much diversity that predetermining programmatic areas of focus for twinning partnerships will likely prove impossible. Organisations will need to be given considerable latitude to define their own twinning objectives. Twinning programmes will need to take account of diversity by ensuring the organisations involved are able to define and control the central elements of the needs they seek to address through sharing lessons or seeking support. ICTs have a significant role to play in creating mechanisms that enable the efficient matching of needs and resources without denying this diversity.

A large majority of respondents felt that twinning was an important strategy in the response to HIV/AIDS. They had long lists of challenges that they could see twinning relationships helping them to deal with and equally long lists of resources that they would be willing to find time and ways to share. The strategy is clearly wanted, the needs and resources that it will address or help exchange are present and the scale and complexity of matching organisational needs to available resources lends itself to ICT solutions such as the Needs and Resource Exchange Bank and others explained in the proposal.

3.2 Redefining twinning.

Twinning has largely been defined as formal, contractual collaboration usually between two organisations, one in the north and one in the south, within a project receiving some level of funding. The findings of this process (also reflected in the preliminary findings of the Connecting the Grassroots) point to a much wider range of actually existing forms of twinning partnerships and also to strategies that could be employed to support them.

Regional Twinning - Respondents often defined twinning as a mutual sharing of information, skills and experience happening within regions, countries, and among local organisations. A range of twinning partnerships already exist beyond formal projects between individual organisations. They are often defined by respondents as part of the work of regional networks, national umbrella groups and district or urban based ASO's. Finding ways to support twinning at these levels could help to promote local linkages and exchange and strengthen platforms for such things as advocacy with government or religious leaders or coordinating awareness and education campaigns. Given issues of connectivity and access mentioned below one way to use ICTs to support this important manifestation of twinning is through close collaboration with regional networks that are in turn linked to national and local groups.

Formal and informal twinning - There is a spectrum of twinning relations from the very informal to very formal and ICTs can be developed to support the entire spectrum. Respondents noted that formal relations often grow from informal ones and that informal relations also play an important role in the exchange of information, skills and experience. The incorporation of ICT tools that support both informal and formal twinning partnerships will facilitate a wider exchange of needs and resources and enable support for areas such as programme partnerships, networks, working with volunteers, collaboration on campaigns etc. These less formal or more broadly defined forms of twinning could be supported cost effectively through web based tools. Such tools will also provide mechanisms to sustain formal twinning partnerships past the end of a specific project.

Building trust and open communication - Building trust and commitment are essential elements of twinning and support for these less tangible but critical processes have been identified by respondents as key to successful twinning. Many respondents warned that twinning partnerships that had not paid sufficient attention to power dynamics, building trust and organisational commitment, developing shared agendas and objectives and maintaining ongoing communication, had often failed to achieve their objectives and sometimes did more harm than good. ICTs offer a number of useful mechanisms for building trust, developing objectives, planning, and maintaining ongoing communication such as discussion forums, online descriptions of others' experience, peer review of processes and on-line mentoring.

Tangible and intangible twinning results - There are tangible and intangible elements to the benefits and challenges that twinning presents and it is important to recognise and incorporate tangible benefits such as increasing the reach of a successful programme initiative with less tangible benefits such as improving staff morale. It was interesting that when considering what resources could be shared or what skills were needed by the organisations respondents tended to be very practical and concrete focusing on specific skills, materials, or interventions. When commenting on the benefits of such exchanges or the challenges that twinning partnerships could respond to, many focused on less tangible aspects such as trust, morale, affirmation, and organisational commitment. It is important to keep both these aspects in mind as components of successful twinning partnerships and to ensure that ICT solutions create space for both.

3.3 Language.

Issues of language, culture and diversity of need and context have to be taken into consideration in the development of ICTs for twinning. The discussions in Barcelona raised the idea of some form of regional involvement which was reinforced in the survey response and the preliminary findings of the Connecting the Grassroots process (which has suggested creating a series of regional hubs working in different languages and from different cultural contexts). These discussions raised a number of significant questions about the best approach to a difficult set of issues. How many languages can be incorporated into the ICT tools that support the twinning against AIDS proposal? What would the cost be, how can multiple sites functioning in different languages and run by different groups share information across languages and regions? These questions have to remain at the heart of any participatory global ICT process and need to be continually raised as the process unfolds. The proposal below recommends the new ICT tools be available in English, French and Spanish, that mechanisms supporting the inclusion of regional networks in the process be central, and that complimentary initiatives such as Connecting the Grassroots and its potential regional hubs be worked with wherever possible.

3.4 Methods for twinning.

Respondents did not see formal approaches to education, either University or Distance, as essential methods for exchanging information, skills and experience through twinning and clearly indicated these should not be priorities for the twinning against AIDS proposal. There was strong support for Workshops and Conferences, Staff Exchanges and Secondments, New Training Materials, Distance Mentoring, and Short Courses and Training. This fits with a number of comments from survey respondents, participants in the Barcelona meeting, and members of the Steering Committee indicating a preference for face-to-face contact around meetings and within each other's organisations combined with, or supported by, training and training materials and mentoring. The lower, though still significant ratings for Telephone, Fax, E-mail, and Internet indicate that respondents view them as important but secondary to more direct forms of communication.

3.5 ICTs and twinning

Connectivity - ICTs cannot be counted on to directly reach the grassroots in many parts of the world but it is possible to bridge what has been called the 'last mile' of connectivity by providing outreach tools to those who have access to ICTs and contact with those who do not.

E-mail and Internet remain 'shallow' communication tools in much of the world, only able to skim the surface of what may be happening 'deeper' in a region or country. In many places grassroots community groups do not have access to, and cannot be accessed directly through, e-mail, Internet, or telephone and fax. However, there are significant numbers of organisations using these tools almost everywhere and much higher numbers who want to be able to use them or find ways to access information from them. One of the most important things to keep in mind when considering the 'shallow' nature of ICTs in many parts of the world is that it is essential to incorporate mechanisms through which regional, national or local groups with access can share this resource and support with others – collecting information during meetings, printing and distributing materials and CD ROMs, doing simple on-line research for local organisations, or making sure localised perspectives and experience are being collected and shared through the ICT tools are all examples.

Support for using Web Based ICTs - There was strong support for using the Internet as a tool to enhance twinning provided it was not seen as a replacement for actual contact between people and organisations.

This was reinforced by participants in the Barcelona meeting who felt that while the Internet offers significant promise for improving twinning processes it needs to be combined with face-to-face meetings and the provision of resources to address gaps and inequalities between organisations wishing to participate in twinning relations outside of the virtual space created by a web site.

When asked what kinds of tools a web site should have to appropriately support twinning partnerships, respondents said it should include accessible information on twinning projects and strategies, the tools for peer review and contact, and the capacity to reach out to those without Internet access.

There is support for a web site that provides a central repository of information about twinning projects, training materials, courses, strategies, and upcoming events. There is also strong support for the site to enable the sharing and reviewing of documents, plans, and programmes and especially the sharing and reviewing of twinning experiences. There was somewhat less but still significant support for interactive components that support on-line mentorship, a process for linking needs and resources, and on-line discussion forums. A newsletter in e-mail format providing information and updates on the site and a non-Internet based vehicle for twinning discussion was also rated highly.