Since 1996, MANASO is the leading membership organization playing a unique role as an enabling agent to facilitate Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to collectively and accountably work together to advance the fight against HIV and AIDS in Malawi. MANASO is registered under the laws of Malawi and complies with statutory requirements by registering and restoring annually with NGO Board and CONGOMA.

MANASO Network members are the primary mechanism for the engagement of community and civil society in Malawi’s HIV and health sector at national, district and sub district levels. MANASO works to improve the health status of Malawians, with a special focus on developing and supporting community systems that aim to reduce the number of new HIV infections, increasing access to ART and supporting treatment adherence for people on HIV treatment. The overall objective of MANASO is to support the Government of Malawi’s efforts to improve priority health services and particularly increase community demand for priority services. MANASO does this by building the capacity of CSOs to contribute to the reduction of HIV prevalence, by sharing information, coordination, joint advocacy, community monitoring and mobilization of resources for HIV CSOs in Malawi.

MANASO has over the years worked with CSOs in Malawi and beyond in the areas of; strengthening coordination and collaboration, sharing of experiences and good practices, and improving their technical and financial capacities. MANASO has organized skills development for CBOs and Non-Governmental Organizations to help them improve the quality and scale of service delivery, advocate and monitor the response. The results have been a notable contribution by CSOs to the reduction of HIV prevalence to 10.3 and retaining more than half a million people on ART.

MANASO is a membership organization buttressed by a strong and large paid up membership of 457 organizations in 2017. Of the network membership, 70% are CBOs and the rest are local NGOs and traditionally a small number of international NGOs. MANASOs management structure includes a management and executive committee responsible for the day-to-day management of the network, a 9 member board for policy guidance, regional and district committees and the general meeting, which is the highest decision-making body of the network.