The National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) is organising a three-day training programme for data collectors on the ‘evaluation tools’ developed to evaluate the Workplace HIV Programme which was implemented in Private sector companies in Nigeria.  The training programme commenced Wednesday, June 1, 2011 in Abuja. The key evaluation question for assessment of this programme is, ‘what has the Global Fund Round 5 HIV workplace programme achieved and what impact has been made?’

The Global Fund (GF) is a global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (ATM). In 2005, Nigeria was successful to the fifth call for proposals by the Global Fund (GFR5) and NACA was selected as one of the Principle Recipients (PRs) to co-ordinate the use of GF grant to control HIV/AIDS. The overall goal of the GFR5 project was to scale up the provision of antiretroviral treatment and related services including counseling and testing.  

There are six objectives of the GF Round 5 HIV/AIDS project as outlined below:

1. To scale up comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment, care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS to all the 37 states in the country.
2. To expand access to testing and counseling services to cover 37 state of the country.
3. To strengthen the role of the community, civil society organizations and networks of PLWHA in providing and supporting HIV/AIDS treatment and care.
4. To increase access to care and support services for OVC in 37 state of the country.
5. To increase the capacity of the private sector to implement workplace HIV/AIDS programme in 12 states
6. To strengthen the capacity of implementing institutions for effective programme management, coordination, monitoring and evaluation.  

NACA is to co-ordinate the implementation of activities under three objectives of the grant (objectives 1, 5 and 6).  Society for Family Health (SFH) was allocated objective 2. Under objective 5, which is to increase the capacity of private sector to implement workplace HIV / AIDS programs, NACA through its sub-recipients (Society for Family Health (SFH), Nigeria Business Coalition against AIDS (NiBUCAA) and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity (FML &P) will implement workplace HIV/AIDS programs in private organizations (170 SMEs in 12 states in Nigeria). The workplace HIV/AIDS interventions include:

• domesticating the National Workplace policy in these SMEs
• promoting Behavior Change activities through using Peer Education Approach (training at least 2 Peer Educators) in 170 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) across 12 states in the country
• recruiting and placing people living with HIV in private organizations through the “Greater involvement of persons living with HIV/AIDS” (GIPA) pilot project in Kaduna and Lagos States.

The Director of Strategic knowledge, Dr. Kayode Ogungbemi who gave the opening remarks at the training programme said the training is basically to ensure that the data collectors are grounded on what is expected of them when they get to the field and ensure that the desired objectives of the evaluation are achieved. He emphasized the importance of ensuring and obtaining good quality data. He went further to say that Nigeria as a country stand to gain a lot if the evaluation is properly conducted. There were goodwill messages from Society for Family Health (SFH), Nigeria Business Coalition against AIDS (NiBUCAA) and Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity   (FML&P)
The workshop goal, objectives and deliverables was conveyed by Dr James Anenih. He said the objectives include:

1. To determine the effect of Global Fund Workplace programmes on institutional and technical capacity of the private sectors
   • Assess if the roll out of the national workplace HIV policy was achieved in 170 SMEs (in 12 states)
   • Assess the implementation of Peer Education model in the workplace and ascertain the number of Peer educators recruited and trained
   • Determine the impact of Greater Involvement of Persons Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPAs) at pilot states (Lagos and Kaduna).
2. To determine the effect of the Global Fund workplace program on the beneficiary population
   • assess the impact of HIV workplace programme on employees (in terms of behavioral change, knowledge attitude and practice in relation to HIV)
   • assess the effect of the programme on PLWHAs and their families and the community
3. To identify challenges in the programme and document success stories
4. To make appropriate recommendations that will address these challenges and significantly increase the likelihood of future programme  success
5. To identify organizations’ plans for mainstreaming HIV policy and sustaining HIV interventions in the workplace after the GFR5 ceases.

Dr Emmanuel Alhassan, Deputy Director, Resource Mobilization Unit of NACA gave an overview of the evaluation while Dr Priscilla Ibekwe (Consultant) gave an overview of the evaluation study of HIV workplace programme in private companies. The Employer questionnaire was later introduced to the data collectors by Dr. Dele Babarinde to ensure that they understand the tool to be administered on the field.

The training conducted simulation exercises in groupwork plenary sessions to allow the data collectors have  practical experience of what is expected of them on the field and they are expected proceed to the field to evaluate one hundred and thirty two (132) Small Scale Enterprises (SMEs) spread across twelve (12) states in the six geo-political zones in Nigeria.