scholarly journals Internal Mainstreaming of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe’s Non-Governmental Organisations

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-17
Author(s):  
Rutendo Fran Chitapi

Organisations remain exposed to risk and are vulnerable to HIV and AIDS impacts for as long as they are unprepared to mainstream HIV and AIDS. Certainly without infusing sustainable strategies for the HIV and AIDS pandemic into day to day operations there would be considerable waste of resources. This study sought to establish the level of internal mainstreaming of HIV and AIDS in an international NGO operating in Zimbabwe. Questionnaires were used to collect data from a sample of employees of the NGO, while senior managers were interviewed. Relevant internal documents were also reviewed to help ascertain the extent of internal mainstreaming in the NGO. The main finding was that HIV and AIDS internal mainstreaming had not been successfully done. While the organisation had certain comparative advantages, these were not harnessed to address the causes and effects of HIV and AIDS in an effective and sustained manner within the NGO. The major barrier was lack of commitment by senior management of the NGO. While management were aware of the impacts of HIV and AIDS, there were no tools to enable them to quantify the effect on the NGO. Getting it right for this NGO does not require more financial resources but a paradigm shift and modifying or realigning what is already on the ground for an effective and sustained response to HIV and AIDS.

Author(s):  
Nolipher Moyo ◽  
Julian C. Müller

Culture plays a significant role in people’s lives in Zambia and in Africa as a whole. Consequently, there is a need to take Zambian or African culture seriously in order to look at the salient elements of cultural practices in rites of passage that influence the spread of HIV and AIDS. This article analyses four rites of passage associated with birth, puberty, marriage and death. There are numerous rites of passage in Zambian culture. Some of these rites help to curb the spread of HIV and AIDS, whilst others exacerbate the spread of the virus. Using the Reformed Church in Zambia Bible Study Method of Subgroups, discussions were held that allowed victims of cultural practices to tell their stories using the narrative model. This article sought to shed light on cultural practices that exacerbate HIV and AIDS and more importantly, provide culturally sensitive alternatives to these harmful practices.


Author(s):  
Krista Johnson

Africa has the largest number of people living with HIV, with an estimated 25.7 million HIV-positive people in Africa by the end of 2018. This figure represents over two-thirds of infected people globally. African women and girls represent a majority of those infected, and Africa is home to three-fourths of all HIV-infected women and girls. Across African countries, there are differences in the sizes and trajectories of HIV epidemics. Southern Africa has the worst epidemic, with the numbers infected still rising in some countries. Prompting a development and governance crisis in many southern African countries, HIV prevalence rates are as high as 20 percent of the adult population in some countries and nearing 50 percent of the adult population in certain communities. East Africa too has been hit hard by HIV, leading to high mortality and morbidity rates in that region as well. In most of West and North Africa, there has been limited spread of HIV, with most countries in these regions having HIV prevalence rates of less than 3 percent. Africa’s encounter with HIV and AIDS began before it was first identified as a medical condition early in the 1980s. However, it was not recognized as an epidemic in most parts of Africa until much later. Framed largely as a public health crisis rather than a developmental one, much of the world’s focus on the AIDS pandemic in Africa has centered on access to treatment, and developing effective prevention strategies that have principally focused on behavior change practices for targeted populations. However, the HIV and AIDS pandemic in Africa did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the consequence of longer historical processes such as massive demographic growth, urbanization, and social change, as well as global inequalities and historical legacies of colonialism and imperialism. In this regard, a historical account of HIV in Africa offers an important corrective to the dominant biomedical response to AIDS in Africa. It is important to take note of longer historical processes that have shaped both the virus and the human response to it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Millings ◽  
Lol Burke ◽  
Gwen Robinson

The outsourcing and transfer of labour in the contexts of policing, prisons and courts illustrate that, even in a national context, these transitions are not uniform. Rather, there are a diverse set of ‘privatisation journeys’ that can be taken and that need to be understood. Our focus in this article is on the experience of probation leaders who, under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reform programme, were charged with stewarding their organisation from the public sector, through a 10-month transitional period, and into the full relinquishing of ownership to the private sector. It is an account of how, with no clear ‘transition and transformation’ precedent to follow, a locally-based senior management team from one probation trust engaged with the task of implementing organisational change during a period of great uncertainty. We explore managers’ engagement with the language, working styles and vision of engineering transformational change and how they processed and began to articulate the challenges of new ownership, both for themselves (as individuals) and for their organisation (as a collective). We examine the resilience of the organisational culture at senior management level; the operational dynamism of leaders to embrace change; and the extent to which senior managers felt able to participate in, and take ownership of, the new Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) they were charged with forming.


Author(s):  
Alison Mackey ◽  
Tyson B. Mackey ◽  
Jay B. Barney

The purpose of this article is to examine whether or not having senior managers who are personally committed to socially responsible causes is either necessary or sufficient for firms to implement socially responsible activities. While not denying that having such senior managers may increase the probability that a firm will pursue a socially responsible agenda, this article concludes that senior manager commitment to socially responsible causes is neither necessary nor sufficient for a firm to implement socially responsible activities. This article has important practical implications for those seeking to increase the amount of socially responsible corporate behavior in the economy. In particular, the arguments developed here suggest that efforts that focus exclusively on changing the social responsibility preferences of senior managers in firms may be misguided, and at the least should be augmented by efforts focused on different firm stakeholders.


2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1719-1727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Inácio Bastos

This paper reviews the concepts and methodological strategies that have shaped the monitoring of the AIDS pandemic, today in its third decade. A deliberate effort was made to highlight aspects usually forgotten by the canon. The paper aims to track the footsteps of the evolving strategies in the field of surveillance & monitoring, with the help of disciplines such as epidemiology, molecular biology, social, and behavioral sciences. The deep divide that opposes societies severely affected by the epidemic and affluent societies much less affected by the epidemic is contrasted with the scarce human and financial resources of the societies facing harshest epidemic vis-à-vis the comprehensiveness of the response to the epidemic in their affluent counterparts in terms of the scope and high standards of their initiatives on monitoring, prevention, management & care. The pressing need to implement feasible alternatives to the current sophisticated and expensive ones is briefly discussed. Beyond the renewed challenge posed to the creativity of scientists and health professionals, the AIDS pandemic is described as a major public health crisis, compromising the social fabric in some contexts, and as a never fulfilled calling for an ethics of solidarity between different societies and different social strata of each given society.


2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Nicholson ◽  
Cameron Newton

AbstractWe highlight how directors and senior managers perceive the roles of a board to involve overseeing risk and compliance, strategy, governance, developing the CEO and senior management and managing stakeholders. We find that managers and directors perceive board effectiveness as linked to different combinations of these roles and that there appear to be differences in perceptions between different types of firms. We conclude that clarity around the board's role set is critical to furthering the corporate governance research agenda, and that the relationship between board roles and perceived board effectiveness differs between managers and directors.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prudence Bongekile Mabaso ◽  
Ameeta Jaga ◽  
Tanya Doherty

Abstract Background: Return to employment is a major barrier to breastfeeding continuation, globally and in the Southern African context. The Lancet breastfeeding series revealed an explicit need for research exploring breastfeeding as a workplace issue in low- and middle-income countries. A dearth of research on workplace breastfeeding in South Africa calls for attention to this topic. This study sought to explore breastfeeding at work experiences from the perspective of employed mothers and senior managers in a provincial government setting in South Africa.Methods: The study adopted an exploratory qualitative design with multi-perspective semi-structured interviews. Snowball sampling was employed to recruit twelve participants, (n = 4) senior managers and (n = 8) employed mothers, from two provincial government departments in Cape Town, South Africa. Interviews were conducted between April and August 2018 to capture participants’ experiences with breastfeeding in the workplace. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data. Results: Four key themes that described breastfeeding at work experiences emerged which further traversed three critical maternity periods: pregnancy, maternity leave, and return to work. The prevalent themes were; knowledge about the legislation and breastfeeding support benefits, perceptions and experiences of breastfeeding in the workplace, barriers to breastfeeding continuation, and recommendations to improve breastfeeding support at work. Conclusion: Our study contributions emphasise that breastfeeding support from managers should begin prior to the mother taking maternity leave, and that in addition to infrastructural developments, immediate supervisor support may be critical in fostering breastfeeding friendly workplaces for working mothers. Implications for management for advancing support for breastfeeding at work in the public sector are presented.


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