The Southern African AIDS Trust (SAT) established in 1990, is an independent regional NGO that supports community responses to HIV and AIDS through community capacity strengthening and in-depth partnerships to enhance community HIV and AIDS competence. SAT strongly believes that the inherent strengths of communities such as a deep understanding of contexts and the impacts of HIV and AIDS, solidarity, empathy and practical experience-based solutions remain a great resource in designing and implementing development-aligned HIV and AIDS responses.
To this effect, SAT commits to contribute towards mobilising, supporting and improving these community strengths, to enable people of the SADC region have universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support and to mitigation of the impact of AIDS on communities and its members, through an expanded, comprehensive and sustained response to HIV and AIDS.
What We Do
SAT continues to capacity strengthen and support community-based organisations, emerging regional organisations, and national networks that provide services to people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. SAT works for positive behaviour change and confronts the factors that make communities vulnerable to the spread of HIV and the impact of AIDS. Each year SAT supports about 25 partners in each of its five country programmes (Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe). SAT's regional actions are informed by national priorities through its country offices and the direct link with communities. SATs work has continued to centre on partner recruitment, partner capacity development using the School Without Walls methodology, monitoring and evaluation, communications and publication, grants management and operations research.
This work is done through four strategic areas:
Competence: strengthening and supporting community HIV and AIDS competence through partnerships with emerging community based organisations, networks and advocacy partners (at district, country and regional level).
Knowledge: creation, management and sharing of knowledge on the epidemic and on HIV and AIDS community competence through action research and sharing of new lessons on the epidemic and the response with SAT partners.
Influence: increasing the influence of community experiences on the response and policies on HIV and AIDS through advocacy, in collaboration with strategic partners and through support to network and advocacy organisations.
Values: strengthening SAT and partners as value-led learning organisations basing programmes and operations on a rights-based approach including mainstreaming of gender, human / child rights, SRHR and a meaningful involvement of people living with HIV and AIDS.
To fulfil its strategy, SAT employs the following modalities:
- sub-granting
- School Without Walls
- action research
- strategic partnerships
- communications and publications
- advocacy for policy influence
- Monitoring and Evaluation
Country Programmes
SAT currently has offices in five countries (Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe). SAT country offices work with community partners (25 partners/country per annum) through sub-granting and capacity building, community competence is enhanced and strengthened. Community competence is also built through sharing the rich and diverse experiences of partners through operations research and School Without Walls. The knowledge and wisdom gained in this way is fed into enriching civil society more broadly through SAT’s communications and publications. SAT country strategies are developed within the framework of the regional strategy, while still maintaining their focus on: country responses to the epidemic and national priorities, and lessons learned from SAT’s work in the region. SAT operates within ‘The Three Ones’ principle at national level. Within these country programmes, based on experience, expertise and specific country resources, SAT country offices take a leading role in a particular thematic area within SAT’s overall work. The combined contributions of these leading roles contribute to the continuous development of the region’s coordinated response to the epidemic.
Areas of focus at the national level:
