On 27 July 2020, 41 participants joined the Women4GlobalFund (W4GF) webinar to highlight community reflections from Window 2 and to review progress on gender equality.
The Technical Review Panel (TRP) report and observations on the funding requests submitted to the Global Fund, identifying key trends, lessons learned, and recommendations for HIV, TB and Malaria and for resilient and sustainable systems for health, for human rights and gender, and for strategic investments and sustainable finance. The TRPs most recent report that shows that despite some progress not enough is happening especially beyond the 13 countries that are tracking work around adolescent girls and young women. This is a worrying trend that W4GF is concerned about as we start to focus on the next Global Fund Strategy.
The speakers – engaged at the national level – advocate for women and girls and shared their experiences and leadership. The engagement will be helpful for those who are currently in the process of grant writing and submitting in window 3. To listen to the webinar recording, click here. To access the webinar notes click here
The invited speakers included:
- Carol Nyirenda (Zambia), Executive Director at CITAM+. Carol was involved coordinating civil society engagement in the last country dialogue process through TA from the community, rights and gender and with support from EANNASO
- Daxa Patel (India) has been engaged at the national level for many years and has been on the CCM for two terms representing people living with HIV
- Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga (Bolivia) is a long standing activist and woman living with HIV and a member of the Latin American Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (REDLA) – Violeta is also on the Bolivian CCM representing people living with HIV
- Nancy Bolima (Cameroon), Founder/CEO of the Health Development Consultancy Service focused on health and development and the 1st Vice President of CCM Cameroon and also heads the Civil Society Delegation of the CCM in Cameroon.
The notes highlight key recommendations. We highlight a few key recommendations here:
- For those who engage in window 3 we have to ensure that the TA is well planned and coordinated and that support is provided in a timely manner.
- Civil society and communities must be able to connect with the right people – the writing teams; the country teams to strategically advocate to ensure that gender and human rights is included
- We need to focus on getting the right scale of programmes that make a difference and these can be flagged in the prioritised above allocation request (PAAR) if they are not able to go into the main grant.
- We must leverage COVID-19 to raise issues around GBV and this applies across the Global Fund portfolios and not just in the 13 adolescent girls and young women focus countries.
- Community Systems Strengthening needs to be part and parcel of supporting women’s groups and networks to be supported to strengthen their leadership.
- The more evidence we have the better we can influence Global Fund national processes – If there are issues these can be flagged then we must do this also through the Office of the Inspector General so that we can start to see what are individual country issues and what are more systematic issues. It is important to document lessons learnt in the funding cycle and the recommendations. W4GF have created a tool to support Advocates to document their engagement – this can be found here.