Title: Community Health Nexus - Technical Assistance and Capacity Development to Minority Serving Community Based Organizations
Project Period: September 1, 2005 - August 31, 2008
Project Amount Funded (FY 2005): $278,250
Project Director: Georgia Simpson

The Community Health Nexus project provides assistance to improve internal capacity of at least 60 minority serving organizations in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, and South End, which are highly impacted by HIV/AIDS. These organizations primarily reach Black and Latino residents. An additional 48 minority-serving, faith-based organizations receive assistance in implementing HIV/AIDS programs.

Core activities include workgroups facilitated by consultants, involving peer education and community learning. These workgroups are conduced as a series of two to three sessions, focused on organizational management as well as programmatic needs, including financial management and budgeting; human resources management; forging effective collaborations; grant writing; board development; program design using evidence-based interventions; program implementation; and program evaluation. The Micah series includes two workgroups providing faith-based organizations with knowledge, sensitivity, and skills to successfully incorporate HIV/AIDS activities into their ministries. Micah Part I provides an overview of HIV/AIDS with a theological basis for the church’s response, psychological and sociological dynamics, and stages and methods for HIV pastoral counseling. Micah Part II helps interested faith-based organizations prepare for and begin the process of identifying and incorporating evidence-based HIV/AIDS interventions. Between monthly workgroup sessions, project staff follow participants to assess the level of integration of skills and knowledge gained, and to provide individual technical assistance, tailored to the specific needs of the organizations. A Resource Collaborative Approach is used as the framework for project evaluation. The evaluation committee meets on a bi-monthly basis, and convenes community forums twice annually, involving discussions with project participants and other staff from their agencies regarding evaluation feedback and systems change.

Click here for a listing of all FY 2005-2007 grantees