Mini-Grants: Big Actions in Support of the HIV Response in LAC

Also available in: Español

By: Constanza Armas

On January 25, the LAC team of the Global Fund Secretariat, ALEP and Key Populations Project, PANCAP, CVC, and COIN, with the support of the LAC Platform, organized the webinar “Introductions to mini-grants for community-based HIV organizations in LAC” to share experiences with community-based organizations engaged in the HIV response, and explore opportunities for improvement.

After two years into the pandemic, the negative economic, health, and social impact of COVID-19 has become evident in the countries of the region: worrisome disruption in the provision of health services, shortages of health supplies, cuts in the supply of antiretrovirals (ARVs), among others, threaten the response to HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In the face of this, civil society organizations and key population groups have played a leading role in mobilizing when and where governments could not. (For more information, see the UNAIDS report, Holding the line: Communities as first responders to COVID-19 and emerging health threats).

With this reality in mind, in 2021, PANCAP, as the regional grant administrator for the Caribbean, offered mini grants for community-based HIV organizations in the region. This action aimed to support and strengthen community and civil society engagement in the HIV response within the challenging COVID-19 situation that we are currently experiencing. During the webinar, participants explored opportunities to improve and scale up this work as part of several countries’ funding requests for HIV to the Global Fund in March 2022 and other submissions underway.

The speakers shared their lessons learned and recommendations throughout four presentations. Guillermo Márquez Villamediana, Senior Community Support Officer at the UNAIDS Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, opened the meeting by showing a video in which leaders of HIV response organizations from different LAC countries described the challenges faced by associations during the pandemic. He acknowledged that “COVID has disproportionately affected the most vulnerable groups” such as people living with HIV, people deprived of liberty, and key populations—including women and youth, indigenous people, afro-descendants, migrants and refugees, sex workers, people who use drugs, among others.

In the COVID-19 context, many vulnerable populations had no access to food and personal hygiene products (essential for the COVID-19 response); there was a disruption in the provision of ARV services, and many people were victims of mistreatment and discrimination during the mandatory confinement period.

In this regard, in July 2020, UNAIDS carried out the SOY CLAVE (I AM KEY) initiative, which funded 61 projects in 19 countries in the region, reaching 700,000 people. Speakers singled out at least four aspects of this experience. Firstly, the possibility of building and strengthening the capacities of grassroots organizations in the drafting of proposals for funding applications through training and accompaniment was deemed successful.

In the second place, Márquez Villamediana highlighted the importance of opening the call for proposals, which made it possible to “reach organizations that historically did not have access” to resources, increasing support and broadening the range of experiences. As a third aspect, he pointed out the fine-tuning of accountability mechanisms both in the programmatic and financial areas, which allowed aligning the community proposals with the country’s priorities and those of UNAIDS, the global strategy, and the SDGs.

Finally, strengthening the communication areas of the organizations was key to disseminating their activities, facilitating dialogue between associations, improving advocacy, engaging donors, governments, and key partners, and linking them to other funding possibilities.

In his remarks, Ivan Cruickshank, Executive Director of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC), commented on the experiences in the Caribbean and highlighted the fundamental contribution of external partners in the development of proposals, and the need to strengthen communication and support for smaller grassroots organizations.

Ingrid Bretón, from Fundación Grupo Paloma in the Dominican Republic, presented a sustainable experience in which people living with HIV and in vulnerable situations had access to employment by planting and selling vegetables and fruit. This foundation demonstrated the success of establishing partnerships with funders, government institutions, and individuals. You can review some of their work in this article (in Spanish).

Finally, Lilian de Jesús Gaitán, from Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de Salud (Center for Health Research and Studies, CIES) of Nicaragua, shared the work of linking with families in the community of Belén, in Managua, to whom they distributed HIV and COVID-19 prevention materials. In these experiences, participants addressed different activities in coordination with the government and international organizations. Activities such as this one offer a valuable opportunity to get to know different experiences and learn from the successes and errors of the initiatives undertaken by other actors. There is still a long way to go yet: one of the interveners from civil society commented that “even these grants have very high standards,” which meant that access is not guaranteed for all organizations. It is essential to acknowledge this reality and continue looking for alternatives to include those small groups that are shouldering the HIV response in the region.