AIDS Coalition of Alabama Project

The main goal of this project is to strengthen the capacity of African American organizations to address the increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic in African Americans in Alabama which resides in the Deep South (Alabama) where the epidemic continues to increase. Although the one large statewide AIDS serving organization (AIDS Alabama) and the state health department are well funded to address HIV/AIDS prevention in the state, there is only one large AIDS Service Organization (ASOs) in Alabama which is solely focused on HIV/AIDS prevention in African Americans – Selma AIR. There was one other which is now out of business. Additionally, a few of the majority servicing ASOs have also gone out of business. There are a few other smaller organizations as well as organizations with broader missions focused on HIV/AIDS prevention in African Americans in Alabama, however there is a lack of specific organizational capacity building focused on HIV/AIDS in the African American community in Alabama.

AframSouth, Inc. has begun to fill this void. In 2012, we held an initial planning meeting with a few interested persons from invited agencies such as Southern AIDS Coalition, AIDS in Minorities and RP White Consultants in order to discuss the lack of current organizations, strategies to increase funding to existing organizations, and the development of new organizations.

In 2014, AframSouth hired ReaShanda White as a consultant to organize its first Capacity Building Meeting held June 13, 2014 in Montgomery, Alabama. This meeting brought together 20 persons of diverse backgrounds including 3 HIV/AIDS consumers, faith based leaders, and service providers and organizations to begin to discuss pertinent HIV/AIDS issues affecting African Americans in Alabama. At that meeting, it was decided that we would move forward with continued planning with facilitated telephone conference calls over the next several months and a follow up meeting scheduled for September 2014.

At the June 13 meeting, we surveyed participants and asked them their priority areas for continued planning and the top 5 responses for training and collaboration were:

1. Fundraising
2. Grant writing sessions
3. Increased capacity to increase linkage to care for positives
4. Diversification of Services for organizations
5. Increased capacity for consumer/community empowerment

Funding is requested to support the planning and implementation efforts of the capacity building efforts of the ACAP. We are requesting $25,000 to financially support the continued planning efforts from time of funding for coordinator fees for planning the telephone conference calls and upcoming September meeting as well as one collaborative project (to be decided by coalition members) and one training session December 2014-January 2015. We are targeting a total of 50 members in the ACAP with a total of 30 organizations reaching a total of 10,000 organizational or community members not HIV+ (average 333 each) and 3,000 HIV+ persons (average 100 each). Additional funds will be used for facilitator fees for telephone conference calls, speaker fees (hotel, transportation, speakers fee), meeting room fees, food and other conference fees for the September meeting as well as the December/January training session, as well as administrative costs for AframSouth such as office space and costs, supplies, personnel, etc.

We would like to partner with existing African American ASOs throughout the country to assist us with capacity building. We have identified Community ……..toni’s organization as one of those partners. They have agreed to be a partner in our mission. (See LOS)

We also plan for this funding to serve as seed funding for additional funding and continued organization of the ACAP.