Why join

Stronger together Working together gives a broader base to understanding, and learning from one another improves each member agency’s individual response. The Consortium facilitates opportunities to learn and share. The Consortium provides additionality. It creates opportunities for engagement with national and international policy makers and strategists in addition to an individual agency’s relationship with these departments and institutions.

It provides a conduit for engagement for agencies that do not have the capacity for policy advocacy.

Through it's campaigning arm, the Stop AIDS Campaign, the Consortium also provides an opportunity for members to engage in collective campaigning and lobbying on issues jointly decided by members. See: Stop AIDS Campaign website.

By providing a framework for collective effort the Consortium can enable NGOs and civil society organisations to be more effective in some areas than individual agencies can hope to be. This is efficient and cost effective.

As the profile of the Consortium continues to develop nationally and internationally, and its reputation for integrity and quality of work and contributions to the global AIDS response continues to grow, this reflects positively on all members.

Practically the Consortium offers:
• Quarterly meetings to discuss issues and give updates. One major current issue is usually addressed in some depth.
• A monthly 'Bulletin' of Consortium and member news, information on resources, meetings, workshops etc
• Our members 'Weekly News & Research' email service
• Facilitation of small groups of people from different areas of expertise to address common issues
• Management and targeting of information from around the world
• Report backs from international and regional meetings and conferences
• Liaison with national and international bodies
• Briefings by donors and UN agencies, and others on their thinking and policies
• Access to the Members only section of our website to review minutes of meetings and policy documents

What will you have to put into it?
The Consortium is only as strong as its members and depends on its members in many ways. However, most of the activities do not require a time consuming commitment. The information shared by members, and the links maintained by the Secretariat enables the Consortium to remain well informed, and to respond to needs as they arise. Members need to be prepared to share experience and to work with the Secretariat in ensuring the right issues are discussed.

A financial contribution is required depending on the income of each member. The Consortium’s core costs are met by membership contributions.

Recently the Consortium has moved away from facilitating long term working groups. Although this facility still remains, the emphasis now is on small groups engaging on short-term pieces of work with a specific outcome or target. This approach fits in much better with members own work programmes.

Those who want to be more involved can stand for election to the Steering Committee, which is voted on annually at the AGM. Steering Committee Members are directors of the Consortium. This involves more commitment, including at least four half-day Steering Committee meetings per year and greater discussion and consultation leading to decisions on a wide variety of issues.

So how do I become a member?