Since mid-2024, we have been building and strengthening collaboration between EVIHDAF and academic institutions/faculty members from the global North and the Global South. This partnership initiative aims at facilitating knowledge and expertise exchange, exchange, enhance project implementation, and provide a wide range of opportunities for faculty members and EVIHDAF staff.

As an approach, we opted to categorize these partnerships into individual partnerships with faculty members and institutional partnerships with research institutions and universities while keeping in mind the objectives below:

• Foster knowledge exchange through collaboration between EVIHDAF and academic institutions for sharing expertise, methodologies, and best practices.
• Strengthen project implementation by leveraging the combined strengths of EVIHDAF and academic institutions.
• Provide professional development opportunities to both parties, and consultancy for faculty members and internships/practicums for students within EVIHDAF, as well as facilitating EVIHDAF staff members’ spending time at the academic institutions.
• Streamline collaboration for fundraising by establishing a formal mechanism for joint applications for future technical assistance and research proposals.

To date, this scheme has enabled us to partner with both Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University. We have also signed seven (7) individual partnerships