MANASO

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, increase access to ART and support 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. MANASO’s 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.

The 2016 Sector-wide Independent Institutional Assessment (SIIA) commissioned by the Office of the President and Cabinet of the Malawi Government and UNDP undertook a comprehensive review of the structures, systems, processes and mechanisms for delivering the national response to HIV and AIDS, with a view to ensuring that they are fit for the post-2015 demands of working towards ending the AIDS epidemic.  The report points out that Malawi will not get to 90:90:90 if there is no coordinated community response and it recommended that MANASO is the best placed national CSO to lead and strengthen CSO coordination in Malawi.

In terms of relevant sectoral national and international strategies, MANASO endeavors to align to the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan (2015-2020), the Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP) and the new MGDS III. Globally, the Global Fund, PEPFAR and UNAIDS have new strategies. Overarching amongst these are the SDGs. All these developments have happened amidst dwindling fiscal space and declining resources for CSOs locally and globally. Capacity deficiencies and the absence of a coordinated approach to national agendas and issues have negatively affected many local CSOs. Good models, practices and interventions remain unscaled up. This is therefore a critical time for the nation and requires the strengthened leadership and vibrancy of local CSOs.

MANASO currently is funded from two fronts: annual subscriptions from network members and institutional donors. The majority of MANASO’s members are CBOs with a low contribution is $5 per annum. Work is advanced to design new membership benefit packages of higher value in subsequent years. MANASO enjoys social capital arising from the vast and diverse membership as the sheer numbers allow it to command influence in the country, the SADC region, and beyond.

Due to shrinking funding resources, MANASO has undertaken measures to cut costs, including moving to a less expensive office space, reduction in staff members by transitioning some full-time positions to part-time consultancy, and combining program activities to reduce travel time and other costs. MANASO conducts annual audits and these have never been qualified.

The new 2018 – 2020 three-year Strategic Plan is critical for MANASO in its bid to improve functionality and relevance from national to community levels. The desired outcome of this Strategic Plan will be clear direction and agreement of a new way of working for the MANASO network which enables it to be rightly aligned and strategically engaged in the implementation of the ambitious goals set out in the NSP, HSSP, SDGs and more to unleash the potential and contribution of community organizations to positive health outcomes in Malawi. 

The new strategic plan will enhance the accountability role and framework for MANASO. This is because it is recognized that advocacy by civil society is key to strengthening accountability by partners for the implementation of initiatives that contributes to holding those in power accountable to commitments made and the monitoring of progress, as well as providing a sense of mutual goals and objectives. The plan, therefore, charts the way in which MANASO members will be systematically engaged in the realization of the various commitments and initiatives, and ensuring space and voice of communities at all levels so that no one is left behind.

Additionally, after more than 20 years of operation, MANASO needs to have a new mindset of game changing strategies, which can only be achieved with adequate coordination, advocacy and representation cascades that link the network to the Global Village. The network members can no longer work in isolation and need to employ joint programmes and driving a generation of community level data for the country.

Another pillar of this new plan will therefore be improved coordination and strategic engagement to re-establish MANASO relevance in line with the trends in national and global developments.