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Source: Corresponsales Clave (Key Correspondents)
In April of this year, the Global Fund relaunched the COVID-19 Response Mechanism (C19RM) by allocating extraordinary resources to countries with ongoing grants. An aspect given greater attention on this occasion was community engagement.
The Global Fund’s and the LAC Platform’s Community, Human Rights and Gender Strategic Initiative wanted to ensure this engagement by means of close technical assistance. The lessons learned from these processes are being collected by the LAC Platform in a brief study that has involved community representatives and consultants who contributed to determining priorities from the perspective of key populations.
As part of the study aimed at knowing experiences and results in the community consultation processes on their priorities and proposed solutions included in the C19MR 2.0 funding requests in the LAC region, consultants’ and communities’ views regarding the process were collected by applying an online survey. Likewise, request proposals were systematized in order to know the priorities specified by the communities.
These early findings were shared at a small meeting on Friday, September 3, with consultants involved in the technical assistance process. Based on them, some lessons learned were also discussed.
At the meeting, after welcome addresses from Anuar Luna, LAC Platform Coordinator, and Gemma Oberth, Global Fund Regional Platforms Coordinator, Lídice López Tocón and Alfredo Mejía Duarte presented some aspects of the first stage of data collection that they considered to be relevant.
Regarding community engagement, Mejía Duarte highlighted that 776 people participated. Almost a third of them were people with HIV, the second and third largest groups were composed of men who have sex with other men and trans women, respectively. Female sex workers and people affected by tuberculosis participated to a lesser extent.
Among the major funding areas proposed by civil society organizations, community-led monitoring stands out, among which, in turn, training activities on monitoring, the development of observatories and information systems stand out. In terms of community-led research and advocacy, they highlighted actions aimed at studying the impact of the pandemic on key populations, its inclusion in social programs and country preparedness to respond to future pandemics.
The area of social mobilization, creation of links and coordination contained actions to procure food assistance, develop ventures, accompany key populations and mobilize communities to influence the response.
Institutional capacity building, planning and leadership development was the most copious area in terms of actions proposed and prioritized by civil society. Actions aimed at the development of prevention strategies and access to technologies are among the ones that stand out.
Priorities for gender-based violence prevention and response focused on psychosocial care, accompaniment to victims and the creation of a support network. Finally, to respond to human rights- and gender-related barriers to services, actions aimed at accompaniment and advocacy to improve the quality of care and guarantee access to the vaccine were proposed.
The next step in the analysis of the prioritization of actions identified by civil society is assessing the effectiveness of this process, which can be analyzed once the final versions of the approved grants are available and the result of the negotiation processes can be reviewed.
López Tocón highlighted some aspects of the consultation process collected by means of the surveys. With their responses, people described the process as productive, broad, dynamic and participatory.
The results of the survey also highlight the consultant’s role, who must have a broad knowledge of the national context and the communities involved in Global Fund-related processes, as well as a thorough understanding of those processes.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
During the second part of the meeting, the discussion mainly focused on the challenges and lessons that could be drawn from the process.
In the beginning, some challenges related to short deadlines were raised, not only regarding proposal submissions, but also their implementation, which generated some distrust in the communities. The final stage of negotiation with the Country Coordination Mechanism for the inclusion of civil society proposals in the application was a challenging step.
Some consultants noted the importance of opening invitations to broader groups of key populations, so that large community bases can be reached.
On the other hand, according to some consultants, some sections of the process were not clearly established in advance, such as where and when to socialize results obtained. Therefore, several consultants considered it necessary to design, with the large participation of those involved, with all actors, a critical roadmap that includes all moments for socialization, discussion, analysis and review of the final proposal.
It is also important to take into consideration that the expectations of civil society organizations regarding a funding opportunity often exceed real possibilities. Therefore, it is vital to clarify from the beginning the budget lines to be financed.
In the context of the pandemic, virtual spaces during the consultation process allowed to include larger and more diverse groups. However, not all people had the devices, accounts and skills needed to manage themselves effectively in such settings. Experts note that it is important to provide for digital literacy as part of the consultations, alongside literacy regarding Global Fund processes.
The great lessons learned shared by meeting participants was the need for a joint work among the different actors involved in order to achieve their common objectives and protect the civil society consultation space that enables a genuine needs assessment from their own perspective.
The LAC Platform will continue with the analysis of the information collected and will disseminate the results in the coming months.