AFFIRM

We share a vision of strengthening local capacity for response to HIV and AIDS. Facilitation of Human Capacity Development for Response (HCR) enhances care, prevention and action by communities. It also increases their ability to respond to other critical issues.

We have formed an association to work together to expand the understanding and practice of HCR in communities and organizations. Based in the UK, the group includes people who share this vision from any part of the world. The group also welcomes affiliates, who share the vision but cannot actively participate in the development of this work.

Our Vision

We share the vision that communities can make decisions, care, act together and change themselves. A facilitation team approach enables this to happen. This is in contrast to the dominant focus on being 'intervened at', or receiving provision.

Unlike an interventionist approach, the role of the facilitation team is to accompany and mentor local implementers who act with communities in reflecting on their own capacity and their ability to change their own lives and circumstances. With this in mind, we aim to be a 'family' of facilitators of human capacity development for response, who are willing to commit to taking part, regularly, in shared facilitation team experience.

AFFIRM’s work is based on the belief that:

• communities can make decisions, care, act together and change themselves;
• this is best achieved through facilitation and learning in communities;
• the role of a facilitation team is to accompany and mentor local implementers;
• learning from local experience catalyses responses at multiple levels;
• though developed in the context of HIV, this approach is effective in responding to other critical issues;
• HIV and AIDS is an entry point to engaging with life and health;
• faith and personal spirituality are often central to people’s capacity for coping, changing, and sustaining hope.

AFFIRM’s aim is to:

Act as a facilitation team in response to invitations from people and organisations that wish to:

• experience, understand and promote the development of people’s capacity for response,
• transform organisations,
• learn personally from local experience, and
• influence policy;
• facilitate organizations and teams in a systematic engagement with local response;
• work together to promote and disseminate learning from local action and experience.