Technical assistance needs will be identified and terms of reference developed, with government partners and other donors as part of the national planning process. The government of each country are preparing to update National Strategic Plans over the next 2 years and this will present an important and timely opportunity to identify appropriate technical assistance needs.
Disbursements from the flexible assistance fund will be grounded in harm reduction principles and practice, and guided by a set of criteria and will follow three main principles: a) activities should be relevant and needed for effective National AIDS Programme implementation; b) activities should facilitate directly or indirectly effective implementation of harm reduction activities among groups at risk and c) activities should bring added value and/or have potential to make significant strategic impact on a key area of policy. Technical assistance will be provided via a pre-established pool of qualified national, regional and international consultants and service providers.
National Pools of Consultants
In order to provide the capacity building identified in the Programme Assistance Proposals national pools of Harm Reduction Resource Persons and Consultants have been established in each country by advertising for applications in each country. They include some professionals from within the government and prison health service in addition to civil society candidates. The Resource Persons and Consultants (approximately 10-15 per country) will be skilled in harm reduction methods, train-the-trainer techniques and organizational consultancy approaches in order to provide capacity building support and mentoring of HRSOs. The Regional Harm Reduction Adviser will provide the skills development for the national pool of harm reduction resource persons and consultants, as necessary contracting international or regional external consultants or service providers to assist.
The Regional Harm Reduction Adviser and National Coordinators will be able to draw upon the pool of Resource Persons and Consultants via a Capacity Building Resource Centre within each NIP office. The Capacity Building Resource Centre is envisaged as an administrative function rather than a physical space. It is a means to coordinate and administer the training, capacity building, and follow-up accompaniment, mentoring, and quality assurance that will be required by the HRSOs being funded by the Programme. The resource persons and consultants will be contracted directly by the NIPs or the Regional Programme Office based on specified terms of reference and reporting requirements.
As each HRSO Programme Assistance Proposal is approved the capacity building activities that it identifies will be incorporated into the Programme’s national capacity building plan being administered by the National Coordinator. The National Coordinator will regularly coordinate with other donor-funded programmes, regarding the content of the Programme’s national capacity building plan. Where possible to avoid duplication or to add-value the training needs for HRSOs will be met from within the planned capacity building activities of other projects. Within the Programme where common training or skills development activities are identified, the training participants will be aggregated, and the training delivered by national consultants or resource persons called-down from the Capacity Building Resource Centre. Regional or trans-border capacity building activities will also be designed when appropriate. At the same time specialised programmes customised for each HRSO may be resourced by consultants from the Capacity Building Resource Centre.
In order to provide quality capacity building services requested by HRSO under CARHAP funding Programme pay strong attention to developing individual capacities of national/regional consultants. General capacity building plans for all Consultants and also, to certain extent, individual capacity building plans for each Consultant appropriate to his/her needs and qualifications will be elaborated again through participatory needs assessment.