ANSA International Program Blog

I am beyond excited that ANSA is now "officially" partners with Ikamva Labantu of South Africa and Hope Initiatives of Namibia!  These two organizations are doing extraordinarily good work under extraordinarily challenging circumstances.  We have much to learn from, and to share with, both partners.

Seven U.S. agencies are ANSA Global Member Agencies (GMAs): AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), Community Servings (Boston), Food & Friends (Washington, DC), Food for Thought (Sonoma), Lifelong AIDS Alliance (Seattle), Open Arms of Minnesota, and MANNA (Philadelphia).  To identify how to put together the GMA teams that work collaboratively with our African partners, I needed to spend a little time with each agency to understand the capacity and expertise within their organization.  Over a whirlwind seven days I visited five cities on both coasts to learn a great deal more about the awesome talent we have within the ANSA family. 

In the end, the GMAs chosen for the South Africa partner team will be APLA, Community Servings, Lifelong AIDS Alliance, and Open Arms of Minnesota.  These agencies have various levels of experience working with international programs and/or have particular expertise within their organization that will lend good perspective to the volume, race and cultural complexities that well-established Ikamva Labantu deals with daily in the South African environment.  The Namibia partner team will be Food & Friends, Food for Thought and MANNA.  These agencies have particular in-house skillsets and organizational cultures that will lend well to the core infrastructure and program design support that Hope Initiatives needs at this time in their young evolution.  

The individuals heading to South Africa will include; Dr. George Ayala of APLA, a monitoring and evaluation specialist who teaches organizational capacity building to CBOs both domestically and abroad; Patrick Shultz of Lifelong AIDS Alliance, a nutrition services director with valuable experience as a special diets chef and a grant writer; and Rosario Dominguez of Community Servings, a program director with a long history of leadership in child and family welfare programs.  Joining us will also be Tony Zappa, an Open Arms board member and a pharmacist currently volunteering for a year in Cape Town, and Cade Fields-Gardner, an HIV nutrition specialist who has been working with dieticians in the Western Cape for many years.

The individuals heading to Namibia will include: Rachel Gardner of Food for Thought, a client services director and master gardner who helped plan and implement Food for Thought's amazing community garden (profiled by the New York Times in 2006); Emily Piccirillo of Food & Friends, a grants manager with a background as an art therapist and executive director of a children's AIDS organization; and Sue Daugherty, a chief operating officer and dietician with many years of experience in illness-related nutrition.  Also joining us will be Margie Erwin, an HIV dietician from Sacramento who has worked with childrens' nutrition programs in Kenya and Ethiopia.

These organizations and individuals have the pioneering spirit necessary to put together a strong foundation for the partnerships and the ANSA International Program.  That will be a key priority for us when we begin our work together on our first team trip to Africa in mid-July.  But before then there's a whole host of things to do to get us ready!

Stay tuned...

Peace to all...Mary