Clever Chilende

Clever is a Programs Manager with the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign (TALC). He joined TALC as a volunteer in 2008 after spending many years as a banker and private business consultant, through which he developed an interest in advocacy. Before his Fellow’s project, he worked for several years on campaigns to end ARV shortages in Lusaka and to establish an ART center in Chazanga, a densely populated and rural area in Zambia’s Eastern Province.

Fellowship Focus
Clever’s project informed national VMMC policy, and he coordinated a project in budget monitoring and expenditure tracking in the health sector. He also worked to increase community participation in the health budgeting process and was directly involved in drafting Zambia’s Country Operating Plan for PEPFAR. He joined key national working groups and formed a civil society coalition on HIV prevention through which he influenced policy and programming.

In Their Own Words
I now realize that in order to be more effective in advocacy, there is a need to identify advocacy spaces and find your way to the decision-making table. At the same time, I have learned that to be effective in advocacy you need to build a strong coalition. This is because advocacy is in numbers.