The Business Response to HIV/AIDS: Impact and lesson learned

influence on a wide range of national policies,
opportunity to improve HIV prevention and care in the
workplace.
iv. Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS: as a member of
the Council's advisory planning group, the Alliance
provides free consultancy concerning business/NGO
collaborations and issues concerning HIV in developing
countries.
Alliance motivation: increased and improved involvement
of business in the response to HIV/AIDS, increased business
understanding of the legitimate role and potential benefits
of working with NGOs, and an increased public profile for
the Alliance on the international stage.
In addition, the Alliance has developed a toolkit which is a
set of practical participatory activities to assist an
organisation in developing effective partnerships with
other organisations. In addition, a policy report on
partnership building has also been developed which
documents experiences of the Alliance's work on building
partnerships over the last six years. This report aims to
share lessons learned and recommendations for the use by
other NGO support organisations, donors and
policymakers.
3. Results and lessons
The Alliance's experience has shown that there is a
legitimate role for NGOs to work in partnership with
businesses with benefits for both parties. For NGOs,
partnership with business allows access to decision-makers,
exchange of information covering a range of issues,
including HIV workplace policies, and sound programmatic
philanthropy.
From the Alliance's experience, issues around the potential
for business agendas to impact on that of an NGO are no
more real than with any other donor, and can be
effectively counteracted by sustaining a broad and diverse
funding base.

THE BUSINESS RESPONSE TO HIV/AIDS: Impact and lessons learned

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