Table 1.
Community mobilization strategies used in Project Accept
| Strategies | Representative quotes |
|---|---|
| Stakeholder buy-in | “[Gatekeepers] are those that are highly regarded in the communities—the chiefs, the sub-chiefs, and any other persons in the position of leadership—those are the ones that we have to talk to first and then they sort of open the gates for you to go down to the village level and then be able to interact with the village people, and one other thing is that they accompany you to the people, introducing you to the people and then they help you in selling your idea to the people…” —Zimbabwe, KI #3 |
| Forming community coalitionsa | Positive |
| “These people [CBOVs] have been playing a huge role in supporting us, and providing us information from their respective communities.” —Tanzania, KI #3 | |
| “What they [the CBOVs] do is encourage people to talk more openly about HIV and to make this issue more common around them and to provide knowledge about HIV.” —Thailand, KI #2 | |
| Negative | |
| “You find that the community working groups failed to understand their role because we expect them to be the go-betweeners, but what you find at the end of the day they will end up taking sides—maybe taking the community's side or taking our side…” —Vulindlela, KI #1 | |
| Direct community engagement | “So when we are having an open dialogue we just discuss issues related to HIV—condom use, what people think can be done to decrease the spread of HIV—it is really nice because during the open dialogues as much as we are teaching them and educating them about HIV/AIDS we are also learning, so we are also getting knowledge from them.” —Soweto, KI #1 |
| Community participation | “Often times people who come [to the community meetings] never think about VCT, but when they come to hear about HIV/AIDS and learn, that also motivates them to get VCT because the education makes them able to assess their risky behaviors…” —Thailand, KI #1 |
| Raising community awareness | “So the brochures have full information about what we are doing on that time or what Project [Accept] is doing now so we need to maybe bring some brochures and spread them to community so that people can access the information…” —Tanzania, KI #3 |
| Community leader involvement | Positive |
| “Because when you talk to the leaders first and then go to the community member afterwards, then obviously the community members are going to follow because the leaders are good [okay] with everything.” —Soweto, KI #1 | |
| Negative | |
| “And the people who should make decisions are the community members instead of the leaders. Because the leaders, sometimes you might find that what is important to them is just the position.” —Vulindlela, KI #1 | |
| Creating partnerships with organizationsb | “Right now we are in the process of consulting with other organizations because what we have noticed is that we cannot do this alone.” —Vulindlela, KI #1 |
| “But when we got to the community, they said, `Yes we have the information you have given us but there is something missing from your package. That is the issue of life.' So we then said, well, let us look around, who is in this district, who else is working in this ward and what are they doing so that we could partner with them. So it was us going to seek partners and then coming back to the community and then trying to address those issues, those concerns that had been raised by the community.” —Zimbabwe, KI #3 |
a
Soweto did not report negative aspects of forming community coalitions
b
Forming partnerships was emphasized more in Vulindlela, Soweto, and Zimbabwe and less in Thailand and Tanzania