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this page Building upwards from the ground - Interview
Melanie Judge – The POLICY Project facilitator
I assisted in the design of the strategic planning process that took place at the All Africa Anglican Conference on HIV/AIDS. Amongst other things, this involved looking at how we were going to get people to participate actively in the formation of a common vision around HIV/AIDS for the Anglican Communion. My role extended to managing the facilitation process at the conference, and then into the dioceses’ planning. I also co-authored the planning guide, Planning our Response to HIV/AIDS – A Step by Step Guide to HIV/AIDS Planning for the Anglican Communion (PDF Document 4.3MB).
In retrospect, it was critical to have these roles linked because it meant there was a common core team from the beginning to the end, making sure all the threads tied together. In that way the process was powerful because it started as a very broad intervention targeting all dioceses across sub-Saharan Africa and then it came right down to the local diocesan level in a village. So continuity was critical – and part of the strength of the process was active involvement by participants at all levels, regardless of their hierarchy or position within the church.
Integrating HIV/AIDS into the Anglican Communion
It was critical that this undertaking was driven and led by somebody from the Anglican Communion because it allowed Anglican issues to emerge. If the POLICY Project (or any other facilitation team) had been asked to do this work without the drive and leadership of the Anglican Communion, I don’t think it would have been as successful. The All Africa Anglican Conference also played an important role because leadership across the Anglican Communion was given the mandate to drive a process of integrating HIV/AIDS into their parishes.
The theological context was really important and, as the facilitation team, it was important to speak the language of HIV/AIDS from a faith-based perspective. We had to understand, for instance, how HIV/AIDS and disease is understood within the Anglican theological context and what theology says about non-judgementalism, care and tending to the sick and the poor.
Our brief was to take people at a diocesan level through a process so they could come up with their own plan to integrate HIV/AIDS into their work. But, despite our directive role, we had to stand back and let the community identify the priority areas they wanted to respond to. In some instances these were different from what we imagined. We may have thought, for example, that orphan care would have been a top priority, but communities identified that their pastors needed to be better equipped to deal with HIV/AIDS, so they opted for leadership training instead. And, indeed, in that community without the support and awareness of the clergy, orphan care would not have been easily facilitated. So, we had to learn to step back and say, “The wisdom of the community will dictate what the plan is going to look like.” For me that was really important because, having gone through that process, the community is able to own the plan more fully.
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