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Source: LAC Patform

By: Liz Aldana and César Coria

In October 2022, the implementation of the Multi Country Regional Global Fund Grant Phase 2 began, in charge of CARICOM – PANCAP/CVC/COIN. In this context, the LAC Platform interviewed two of the members of the COIN team, Vanessa Uzeiy Rosario and Ana Martín, to learn more about the challenges and progress achieved in the implementation of this project. The Center for Orientation and Comprehensive Research (Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral, COIN) is responsible for the implementation of the grant in three countries: Hiati, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. 

LAC Plataforma: What are the main goals and objectives to be achieved in the new grant for COIN? 

Ana Martín: “We don’t have separate goals for COIN and for the others, there are 4 main objectives to be achieved in this new grant.  They are the same for us, they’re the same for CVC and PANCAP. So, the way this grant is built, we have PANCAP working on a top down approach, working with governments and agencies to achieve the enabling environment.  CVC and COIN work bottom up, with civil society to implement the services and also advocate for improvements.  The difference between CVC and us is the countries that we work in. So, COIN has Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. CVC has other countries in the English-speaking Caribbean working on the same objective.    

First, one has to do with the scale up of differentiated services for key populations in the different countries that the project works with.  

Second one has to do with increased available resources for key populations programing.   

Key population programming, this has activities related to social contracting and any resource mobilization actions are included in this objective, such as advocating for the governments to allocate more funds to key population programming.    

The third is focus on human rights and gender based violence. Reducing stigma and discrimination, the elimination of human rights violations and gender based violence towards key populations, because we know that all of these: stigma, discrimination, gender based violence, etc, are barriers for the populations to access the services and to adhere to the treatment and have good health outcomes.    

Fourth one is oriented to improve regional HIV response, governance and use of strategic information for advocacy. Knowledge generation and use of strategic information on key populations for decision making and advocacy by communities and other stakeholders.“ 

LAC Platform: What new challenges will they have to overcome in this new implementation cycle, taking into account the obstacles and lessons learned from the previous cycle?    

Vanessa: “In the Caribbean we work with three totallly different contexts. We work with Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba, so the language is a also a barrier.  

Ana Martín: “Challenges that we have faced and that we will face is the political and social situation in Haiti. It’s very hard to implement in Haiti because many people have just left the country. So, for example, when we are trying to hire technical assistance, it’s very difficult to find people in country that can do the work.   

Also, the organizations are trying to work, but often they don’t have electricity, they don’t have gas. They don’t have houses because it’s unsafe. So they need more time to implement because many days they want to work and they can’t.   

Also they need more resources because everything is super expensive in Haiti, and the exchange rate has been going up and down and has been crazy. So it’s very hard to budget anything and know how much you’re actually going to need.   

So implementation in Haiti is a big challenge, but the organizations are doing a great job at continuing serving the populations, in spite of all the difficulties.” 

Vanessa: “I just want to add about Cuba, that we also have other challenges such as electricity, the lack of Internet and there are limitations with the service providers. There are not too much offers for hiring experts, the exchange of currency because they have two currencies available in the country are also great challenges. And we also have challenges with Cuba in the last implementation. Also we have more strategies in place for this new phase.” 

LAC Platform: Then, one of the challeges and the lessons learned is learning to be more flexible and adapting to the situation where there is no way of verification and official verification, for example, and more importantly, in the exchange of currency. 

Ana Martín: “I guess I’ll just say that it is important that, there’s enough flexibility in the mechanisms and regulations to accommodate for these situations because if we plan and we are not aware or we act like we are not aware of the challenges that the organizations face, we are doing them a disservice. It’s difficult for them to get supporting documents sometimes. It’s not that they can’t prove that they did the activity, but they may not be able to provide all the documents want. So maybe the invoices are not as professional as we would love them to be or they’re supporting documents sometimes or they may need to exchange money on the street because the banks are closed and we are not allowing them or not accepting the exchange rate that they got on the street because we have to use the official rate. But the truth is they couldn’t get the official rate because they couldn’t get to the bank because the bank was closed. What were they supposed to do? Or all these things. I feel like we are lacking flexibility sometimes and rather than looking at whether the people are being served and the objectives are being met, or if the regulations are being met, it’s important, you know what I mean. Meeting the objectives and serving the people is the main goal. There has to be enough assurances that the funds are being used correctly and be a bit more accepting and flexible on how we validate that. In my opinion, it okay.” 

Vanessa: We work through SSR in Cuba. That is NSX that is working in Cuba and living in Cuba and they know the reality in Cuba. Our challenge is because the project has their own rules and there are administrative processes and in order to fit into the project, we have to work with different strategies as there is not a lot of providers to offer the service. We work with CARICOM explaining that because we have to hire the same provider that does the transportation that is in a high cost. And we always work together with NSX to find better solutions for each situation. And sometimes we get very frustrated because of the case in Cuba, that was the case of Dominican Republic also. They just closed the operation and we have to work like, very small progress. In the case of COVID-⁠19, it’s different to Haiti. Haiti was working in the case of COVID-⁠19 and Dominican Republic, too. But Cuba, we have like, a small program during this period.  

Ana Martín: “Well, the lesson learned is that the global fund should be more we would love it to be flexible, but we can’t, because then what we validate then needs to be validated by Caricom and the Global Fund. There are things that we would accept because we can see that the activity was done and the objective was met. But then what we get back is no, this expense was not validated and they need to give the money back. And it’s money that they already spent and they don’t have the money to give it back. That’s the main challenge.” 

LAC Platform: If you can share concrete examples of how implementation of the new grant is going on in one of the countries where the best results are being achieved. 

Ana Marín: “Well, this new grant started October 1, but we didn’t receive funds until the end of February, so I’m tempted to say it hasn’t started, but there is one small grant that has been financed  continuously since we started working with the Global Fund. This is the human rights observatory for vulnerable populations, and they have continued working. So they do have some successes achieved in this period. And that’s what I can share. But basically what they do well, they do training and sensitization, but they haven’t done any yet because there wasn’t funds. They also do legal assistance, psychological assistance for human rights violations victims and gender-based violence victims. And what are the organizations doing? they have the whole network of organizations and they refer the people and then the observatory records a registry of the cases which is also used for advocacy. This only just description in general. And they do provide legal support, and they are supposed to achieve redress. That’s the ultimate goal that they can achieve redress. This is in the Dominican Republic  In the first quarter, they documented nine Human rights violations and seven persons living with HIV and seven gender based violence cases. And the success was that one person living with HIV was reintegrated to their job after judicial process. So they went to court and everything for this case and they were able to get compensation both monetary and the person was reintegrated to the job. Also they got compensation in one of the gender- based violence cases and the perpetrator was sent to jail for 20 years. Those are the two main successes. There were also like pre restraining orders in gender based violence case. That’s very good news. The outcome fell into this quarter, this past quarter. But obviously they started way before. You don’t get compensation and retrace in three months.  

Vanessa: “Vanessa – I think we don’t have many challenges in Dominican Republic and in Haiti because we just started the new grant, but the challenge with what was with the delay of the funds but we don’t present it now like a challenge because we just have like a three months in the planification in doing the work plan and starting the activities and all those things. 

Cuba hasn’t had any progress because we haven’t been able to send them the money because Dominican banks don’t transfer to Cuban accounts. We are looking for a third party to do this. It was done through UNFPA in the previous grant. But they increase their administrative rate. So the sub subrecipient looks to PAHO. They’re trying to change to PAHO to see if they have a lower administrative rates. But the process is moving slowly. You know how it is with UN agencies. They have their processes. So all the financial constraints with Cuba are a big challenge and we haven’t been able to start them.“ 

LAC Platform: In the first phase of the Multi-country project, one of the innovative components in the Caribbean was the implementation of mini-grants, which as far as we know, had a pilot implemented with the Activity-Based Contracting (ABC model). What progress have you made in this process? 

Ana Martín: “We are facing delays because we are moving to activity based contracting in the mini-grants which is great. On the previous grant we conducted a consultancy by an external consultant chosen by the Global Fund. And we thought that the product from that consultancy was enough for us to move forward this year with the ABC programming. And then at the beginning of this grant, we found out that was just like the first part. But now they have to do another big consultancy to finalize things. So we were ready to start the Mini-Grants, but now everything like the Terms of Reference and the Mini Grants manual and everything needs to be revised by this external consultant again. So all the ABC model, the activity based contracting model, we are just waiting for them.  And really, I do think activity based contracting solves many of the issues that we were talking about before, especially with Haiti. Because it doesn’t require as much financial documents to be provided by the organization. So we are very happy about it. It’s just all the paperwork in between delays.  

It´s better we wait than go back and say, oh, no, well, fine, we won’t do the ABC then go and get all the invoices and financial documents from Haiti, it makes it very difficult.  A lot of the small countries have issues like that. For example here,” in Dominican Republic “it´s the same thing, getting quotations, stuff like that, it’s very difficult because the providers are so limited that you go to them over and over for the same quotation and then you can only one of them. So after the third time that you request a quotation, they go like no, because you’re not giving me any work. I had someone on St. Kitts and Nevis tell me that, hey, I can’t be asking people for quotations if I’m not buying their products. And actually, we had a situation where the provider wrote us back and said, no, we can’t continue providing you with quotations because you don’t use our services, so we are not going to give you another quotation. We know we are not going to use the service because we know they are more expensive than the other ones.”     

LAC Platform: So ladies is there anything else that you would like to add.   

Ana Martín: “I hope you will have us back for an interview when the project is more advanced and we can actually share many more successes.”