Coming together to confront HIV/AIDS - The Inter Religious Council of Uganda

Contact for Health

Abstract:

Introduction

The Inter Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) is an initiative that brings together different religious organizations in Uganda to work together along areas of common interest. IRCU brings together the Roman Catholic Church, the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council, the Anglican Church of Uganda and the Uganda Orthodox Church. IRCU was formed for, among other reasons, the realization that there was a need to respond to the pandemic of HIV/AIDS in a more concerted manner. It has the Council of Presidents (COP) who are the heads of the participating religious organisations and the Executive Council made up of eight representatives, two from each religious institution.

The policies and programs are implemented by the IRCU secretariat through the committees that have been formed. The secretariat is headed by a Secretary General who is assisted by a number of other staff both at the secretariat and in the committees. There are, at the moment three committees, namely:

The HIV/AIDS committee.
The peace and conflict resolution committee.
The education and development committee.

The HIV/AIDS office is institutionally located within the office of the Secretary General and it is mandated to link various religious institutions and organizations that are involved in HIV/AIDS work through joint planning, information sharing and implementation and sometimes direct provision of technical support to the organs of these religious organizations in scaling up their responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Whereas IRCU largely plays a coordination role for its members’ efforts in their HIV/AIDS responses, it also facilitates them and other grassroot implementers to access the much needed resources to scale up their response.

The United States Agency for International Development, USAID, is helping this young organization to take up the challenges of HIV/AIDS in Uganda and, perhaps, build up a programme that could be copied or adopted elsewhere in Africa and beyond. For instance, IRCU is the Lead Agency for Faith Based Organizations (FBOs) for the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. The Coming together of these religious institutions has provided more strength and a wider constituency.

Also, the Inter Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) would like express appreciation for the financial support of US dollars 400,000 from the US President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that is coming to help orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) in the areas of basic vocational skills training and scholastic and home care materials for a period of 1(one) year. These resources will also build on and support the on-going OVC projects under IRCU some of which were supported by USAID through their programme, Policy II.

The role of IRCU in the Programme

The role of IRCU in the execution of these programmes has been and will be:

Selection of implementing institutions for support.
Providing guidance and support in planning.
Making periodic financial disbursements to the implementing institutions.
Developing easy to use monitoring tools.
Determining monitoring indicators in conjunction with implementing institutions.
Providing overall project monitoring and support through regular visits.
Making periodic reports to USAID, in liaison with the implementing institutions.
Providing full accountability to the donor agency.
Doing project follow up evaluation.

Monitoring and Evaluation

The beneficiary institutions shall have a monitoring and evaluation mechanism to effectively track progress regarding on-going activities of this programme. Reports (both narrative and financial) shall be received by IRCU from these institutions at periodic intervals of two months.

Rev. Sam Lawrence Ruteikara
Church Human Services AIDS Program (CHUSA) Director/Provincial Health Coordinator
Church of Uganda
P.O. Box 14123 KAMPALA Uganda
Phone: 256 41 270218/272151
Fax: 256 41 232084
E-mail: revruteikara@infocom.co.ug

Submission date: 06/03/2004 02:33 PM