AVAC mourns the death of our very dear friend and colleague, Terry Mukuka, who died in late November.

Terry was truly a gentle giant—calm and caring, dedicated and passionate about human rights and community development, and incredibly funny and fun. His contributions to what we do at AVAC have been extraordinary, but more than that was how he worked—with each one of us, with each project, with each partner. He reminds us always that it is not only what we do, but how we do it that really matters.

Terry was AVAC’s first ever Program Manager for Grants Management, a key position at AVAC that required superior organization, coordination and management skills, diplomacy, patience, and a sense of humor. As our partners can testify, for 3.5 years Terry supremely filled this role as an exceptional grants manager and one of the kindest people we’ve ever worked with.

Terry came to AVAC in 2018 after having worked with national and international organizations including, American Jewish World Service, Yamba Malawi and Pan African Children’s Funds and the United Methodist Committee on Relief who are helping to improve the health and well-being of people around the world. He had extensive experience managing grants and in designing and implementing community development projects on key health and development issues including, human rights, women’s empowerment, youth development, sanitation/health, agriculture, and more.

Terry will be missed by all of us at AVAC, his wife Barbra, his children, his extended family and the many friends and colleagues whose lives he touched each and every day.

We posted stories and memories of Terry in an online board and we invite our community to join us in reflecting on his life so well lived. A fund has also been created to aide Terry’s family. If you wish to contribute, visit this GoFundMe page.

AVAC joins global HIV researches and advocates in mourning the loss of Dr. Scott Hammer, a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Scott was a visionary researcher and scientist, a deeply caring physician and an incredibly kind person. He leaves a remarkable legacy and will be sorely missed.

The latest edition of Protecting Global Gains profiles how Nigeria pivoted during the pandemic to a community-centered approach to HIV testing that resulted in substantial increases in testing. This story, first profiled for the Global Fund Results Report 2021, serves as an example of a health program’s flexibility, resilience and unwavering tenacity in the face of a global pandemic.

In October 2020, UNAIDS reported on data showing that HIV testing has significantly decreased in most countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic safety protocols. Many countries where the Global Fund supports healthcare services have seen a decrease in HIV testing in this time—but not Nigeria. This story, Nigeria Faces Down COVID-19’s Impact on HIV Testing, highlights the innovative, community-centered effort to train community health workers to not only serve as contact tracers but conduct in-home tests for HIV and TB. These innovations both reverse the negative trends due to COVID-19 and provide strategies that will make these health systems more resilient.

Follow the Protecting Global Gains series on social media at @hivpxresearch, @theglobalfight, @Amref_Worldwide and #ProtectingGlobalGains, and consider amplifying these stories on your own social media. Advocates can read about Global Fund’s work to support countries, like Nigeria, to achieve epidemic control during the COVID-19 pandemic. Visit www.protectingglobalgains.org to learn more about how to take action.

Today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and fellow foreign ministers are participating in a meeting to make specific, time-bound commitments and take concrete steps to end the COVID-19 crisis and build back from this pandemic.

But will they actually address the fundamental issues of COVID vaccine access and agree to invest in global manufacturing to address this pandemic and prepare better for the future?

These are exactly the issues that award-winning journalist Stephanie Nolen raised on our November 4th webinar, Reality check about “global” COVID-19 vaccine production. You can catch the conversation with Nolen in this recording, where she explores what she learned reporting her New York Times story, Here’s Why Developing Countries Can Make mRNA COVID Vaccines, and answers advocates’ questions. She was joined by Public’s Citizen’s Zain Rizvi in discussions about the powerful lessons learned from the fight for global equity in HIV treatment, and why the world cannot donate its way to ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nolen lays out the arguments made by the pharmaceutical industry and details how each argument is answered from experts in the field. It’s a picture of a future where strong vaccine manufacturing capacity, established in every region of the world, supports vaccine equity, and a resilient global health system that is prepared for the next pandemic.

At AVAC, we consider the discussion essential listening, or reading.

Quick links to these and related resources

• Webinar recording: Reality check about “global” COVID-19 vaccine production
• Breaking the Bottlenecks to COVID-19 Access infographic
• AVAC’s recording archive of webinars on COVID-19

Award-winning journalist Stephanie Nolen joined AVAC on Thursday to discuss the findings and backstory of her recent New York Times investigation,”Here’s Why Developing Countries Can Make mRNA COVID Vaccines.”

In this webinar, Stephanie, AVAC and partners explored where we are in the fight to bring COVID mRNA vaccine manufacturing to the places where doses are needed most, in countries where vaccine access has been grievously stalled. We talked through her report and the parallels with HIV.

Watch the recording of Reality check about “global” COVID-19 vaccine production.

Stephanie Nolen covers global health for the New York Times. She has reported on public health, economic development and humanitarian crises from more than 80 countries around the world. She has a long history as an HIV journalist and is the author of several books, including “28 Stories of AIDS in Africa”.

Kevin Fisher is AVAC’s Director of Policy, Data and Analytics.

Measuring the impact and meaning of advocacy can be difficult. Often goals are achieved or real progress is made, but documenting the role of advocates in those successes can be a challenge. At the same time, campaigns may not achieve every goal to change policies, fund programs or pass legislation, but still have advanced an issue, broken new ground or taken important steps. Those evaluating campaigns may not be able to show the impact of advocacy or see the signals of progress. Yet it’s critical to assess strategies in real time. AVAC has attempted to maintain a close eye on its work, gauging both success and areas where more work or different thinking is needed.

Through the Coalition to Accelerate & Support Prevention Research (CASPR), designed by AVAC in collaboration with key partners and supported by USAID, we created an evaluation tool entitled Simple, Participatory Assessment of Real Change or SPARC. It’s a participatory system designed to identify outcomes and place advocates at the heart of the evaluation process. As used in CASPR, SPARC harvests “outcome stories” from partners, reviewing these stories across the CASPR network in sessions dubbed a SPARC-fest. Fellow advocates hear the stories, provide feedback, ask questions and test ideas. It is, in a way, a system of peer review for advocates.

Former AVAC staffer Jules Dasmarinas and consultant Rhonda Schlangen discuss AVAC’s SPARC program in a special issue of New Directions for Evaluation, titled Pushing boundaries: Advocacy evaluation and real-time learning in an HIV prevention research advocacy coalition in sub-Saharan Africa.

Why SPARC?

In 2016, AVAC received funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop and implement the CASPR program. CASPR began with its own monitoring evaluation and learning (MEL) system to document outcomes and track indicators of progress. But given the breadth of CASPR partners, AVAC sought a more participatory and inclusive approach that would capture nuances and share lessons for success. SPARC grew from this impulse. SPARC provides a platform for all CASPR members to identify signs of progress and frame outcomes across the Coalition’s priorities. SPARC enables CASPR members and AVAC project staff to see themselves as active contributors in the evaluation process. SPARC demystifies evaluation, expands the discourse, cultivates innovation and informs the advocacy.

As Jules and Rhonda found, SPARC highlighted the following:

• Participants are connected through shared goals and are incentivized to invest in developing relationships and trust. This enables SPARC participants to build off a common foundation and use the process to develop a more nuanced and useful analysis of their collective progress.
• SPARC is integrated into forums that network members use to collaborate and plan their work. This enables SPARC to seamlessly feed into planning, which is actionable learning. By demonstrating immediate application and benefits, SPARC is less likely to be stigmatized as an evaluation process.
• Program managers intentionally calibrate SPARC to integrate and balance with other demands on network participants’ time through exploratory conversations with evalu- ators.
• Evaluators take a “work ourselves out of a job” approach to ensure focus is on sup- port and facilitation of substantive participation. Calibrating evaluators’ role with an eye toward expanding ownership of network members enables evaluators to identify opportunities to support SPARC processes, such as categorizing outcomes that partners may not have time or feel well equipped to conduct.

Where to, SPARC?

Advocacy programs often face erratic funding and questions about their value. Rigorous and multiple evaluation strategies for the advocacy field are important for both prioritizing effective work, but also making the case for supporting advocacy. New advocacy evaluation tools, like SPARC , help advocates show the pace of progress and real impact on their way to achieving major goals. By design, SPARC is a dynamic approach and can be adapted to other coalitions or movements that aspire to learn from all voices in the evaluation process. One AVAC partner, PZAT has an initiative adapting SPARC to its work with the COMPASS Africa project, and AVAC is working with PZAT and others as we update our overarching agenda for monitoring, evaluation and learning across all that we do.

In this Advocates Network, a blog by AVAC’s Kevin Fisher offers a deep dive into an innovative model, SPARC, to show the impact of advocacy.

In September, the publication New Directions for Evaluation featured an article on Pushing boundaries: Advocacy evaluation and real-time learning in an HIV prevention research advocacy coalition in sub-Saharan Africa. Written by former AVACer Jules Dasmarinas and consultant Rhonda Schlangen, the article discusses Simple, Participatory Assessment of Real Change or SPARC, a new model for evaluating the impact of advocacy.

Launched in 2017 as part of our Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (CASPR), SPARC offers participants an inclusive process to gain insights, mark progress, and identify successes in advocacy work that can be difficult to assess. Advocacy wins are not always found in the number of new laws passed or dollars distributed. The most important steps sometimes cannot be counted, but they can be understood. Read Kevin’s blog to learn more…

Putting the “L” in Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) — a journal review of AVAC’s SPARC program

By Kevin Fisher

Measuring the impact and meaning of advocacy can be difficult. Often goals are achieved or real progress is made, but documenting the role of advocates in those successes can be a challenge. At the same time, campaigns may not achieve every goal to change policies, fund programs or pass legislation, but still have advanced an issue, broken new ground or taken important steps. Those evaluating campaigns may struggle to see and show the impact of advocacy or the signals of progress. Yet it’s critical to assess strategies in real time. At AVAC, we maintain a close eye on our work, gauging both success and areas where more attention or different thinking is needed.

Through the Coalition to Accelerate & Support Prevention Research (CASPR), designed by AVAC in collaboration with key partners and supported by USAID, we created an evaluation tool entitled Simple, Participatory Assessment of Real Change, or SPARC. It’s a participatory system designed to identify outcomes and place advocates at the heart of the evaluation process. As used in CASPR, SPARC harvests “outcome stories” from partners, reviewing these stories across the CASPR network in sessions dubbed a SPARC-fest. Fellow advocates hear the stories, provide feedback, ask questions and test ideas. It is, in a way, a system of peer review for advocates.

Former AVAC staffer Jules Dasmarinas and consultant Rhonda Schlangen discuss AVAC’s SPARC program in a special issue of <New Directions for Evaluation. Pushing boundaries: Advocacy evaluation and real-time learning in an HIV prevention research advocacy coalition in sub-Saharan Africa and it’s an important read for advocates.

Why SPARC?

In 2016, AVAC received funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop and implement the CASPR program. CASPR began with its own monitoring evaluation and learning (MEL) system to document outcomes and track indicators of progress. But given the breadth of CASPR partners, AVAC sought a more participatory and inclusive approach that would capture nuances and share lessons for success. SPARC grew from this impulse. SPARC provides a platform for all CASPR members to identify signs of progress and frame outcomes across the Coalition’s priorities. SPARC enables CASPR members and AVAC project staff to see themselves as active contributors in the evaluation process. SPARC demystifies evaluation, expands the discourse, cultivates innovation and informs the advocacy.

As Jules and Rhonda found, SPARC highlighted the following:

1. Participants are connected through shared goals and are incentivized to invest in developing relationships and trust. This enables SPARC participants to build off a common foundation and use the process to develop a more nuanced and useful analysis of their collective progress.
2. SPARC is integrated into forums that CASPR members use to collaborate and plan their work. This enables SPARC to seamlessly support planning. SPARC is learning that leads to action. By demonstrating immediate application and benefits, SPARC is less likely to be stigmatized as an evaluation process.
3. Program managers intentionally calibrate SPARC to integrate and balance with other demands on members’ time.
4. Evaluators take a “work ourselves out of a job” approach to ensure focus is on support, keeping an eye on expanding member ownership of the SPARC process.

Where to, SPARC?

At AVAC partner our commitment to SPARC is ongoing. PZAT, has an initiative that is adapting SPARC to its work with the COMPASS Africa project. PZAT, AVAC and others are continually updating our overarching agenda for monitoring, evaluation and learning across all that we do. It’s essential work. Advocacy programs often face erratic funding and questions about their value. Rigorous and multiple strategies for evaluating advocacy are important both to prioritize effective work and to make the case for supporting advocacy. By design, SPARC is a dynamic approach and can be adapted to other coalitions or movements that aspire to learn from all voices in the evaluation process, a model with much to offer the field. New tools for evaluating advocacy, like SPARC, help advocates show the pace of progress and demonstrate real impact on their way to achieving major goals.