Professionals working with children who attended the XVth International AIDS Conference in Bangkok in 2004 left the conference greatly disappointed. Children’s issues received little profile, despite the staggering numbers of children infected or infected around the world. When children were highlighted, they were portrayed without nuance, as either carefree, or as helpless victims. Many of the professionals who made presentations on children’s issues failed to fully take advantage of the opportunity to promote learning in their field. Instead, they fell into a common conference trap: describing programs with no analysis or without saying anything new, or presenting research without adequately commenting on its implications. Media coverage of children’s issues was poor.

In April 2004, Bernard van Leer Foundation (Netherlands), Firelight Foundation (US) and International HIV/AIDS Alliance (UK) launched an ad-hoc international coalition – the Coalition on Children Affected by AIDS (CCABA) - to ensure that this problem did not reoccur in Toronto in 2006. With seed money provided by the two foundations, a Toronto-based consultant, John Miller, was hired in April 2005. Starting with mailing lists donated by founding members, a coalition of over 100 was built, composed of people working in funding organizations, both private and governmental, children’s specialists in large and small aid agencies, and researchers and academics working in the field. A steering committee was selected.

The Project Consultant soon identified that The Teresa Group and The Hospital for Sick Children were co-organizing a 2-day pre-conference symposium – Envisioning the Future. CCABA soon decided that supporting Envisioning the Future would become part of the coalition’s mandate. The Teresa Group also agreed to be the grantee through which money fund-raised for both CCABA and Envisioning the Future would flow. Steering Committee members eventually recruited other major funding partners, as well as funders who came on board to provide funding for the pre-conference symposium.

All the key elements were in place to begin our work.

At the Toronto conference, we saw some improvement in terms of highlighting children's issues, and Envisioning the Future was a great success. However, it was clear that this project would need to be a longer term venture. The Steering Committee felt that working to influence international meetings was only one part of a broader strategy. After an environmental scan of which coalitions were doing what work related to HIV/AIDS and children, the Steering Committee settled on a new Terms of Reference for CCABA. These terms spell out that CCABA is a collective of private or public foundations and re-granting organizations, supported by a wide list of technical advisors.

Its objectives would be 1) Knowledge development and 2) Policy development, with the following activities:

A. Working to raise the issues of children affected by HIV/AIDS at the International AIDS Conference held every two years. This work will include:

1) Facilitating the convening of a symposium on children affected by HIV/AIDS to be held prior to the International AIDS Conference (IAC) every two years.

2) Working with a network of child-focused organisations to increase the quality, relevance, and persuasiveness of the evidence they bring to the IAC and other international meetings.

3) Where possible, CCABA will also work to raise children's issues at other selected key international conferences and meetings: e.g. regional conferences in Africa, Asia, Latin America or Europe. Each meeting's strategic importance would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

B. Supporting those organizations and individuals who are developing common external advocacy positions or strategies.

C. Using CCABA to share and/or develop internal funding guidelines or operational policy with respect to grantees or potential grantees and, where appropriate, to harmonize those guidelines or policies.

These Terms of Reference were adopted 21 September 2006 in Toronto. For the full text, please follow this link.