After their inaugural meeting in Nairobi in June 2010, the Advisory Board of the Positive Action for Children fund announced grants totalling £3.6m for the following twelve new projects.
Ntankah Village Women Common Initiative Group, Cameroon
A Way Out: Meeting the unmet needs of OVC, PLWHA, and adolescents at risk of contracting HIV
The project aims at scaling up assistance to orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), commercial sex workers (CSW) and People Living with HIV (PLWHIV), and also mitigating the impact of HIV by raising awareness among young people at risk of contracting HIV within the North West Region of Cameroon. This would be achieved through appropriate information, education and behaviour change activities, life skills training and capacity building of key targeted populations.
The project aims to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS, STIs and unintended pregnancies, improve access to sexual and reproductive health services especially PMTCT. Young people will be targeted taking into consideration their special needs from a developmental and rights based perspective. The project will also mitigate the negative socio-economic impacts of the AIDS pandemic through alleviation of poverty and improvement of livelihoods through the provision of income generating activities, affirming the universal right to education, and improving health security through a mutual health fund and provision of nutritional packages.
Save the Children, Democratic Republic of Congo
Developing community level support for families affected by HIV in Masisi territory on North Kivu Province, DRC
This project aims to develop community-level support for families and adolescents affected by HIV in Masisi territory. With 160 reported rape attacks taking place every week in eastern DRC and an estimated 450,000 – 2,600,000 people thought to be living with HIV, Save the Children conducted research in February 2010 identifying an urgent need to reduce stigma and discrimination towards families affected by HIV, as well as decreasing the rate of HIV infection among young people.
Save the Children will engage 10 community committees in home based support for 4,000 orphans and vulnerable children. We will also train 300 adolescent peers educators who can share HIV-related messages, ensuring a further 18,000 adolescents will have access to accurate information on HIV, relationship negotiation, and gender relations. This innovative project also aims to engage militia groups operating in the area, as well as distributing 300,000 condoms through health centres to limit the spread of HIV. The project seeks to develop a sustainable model of community care and addresses the following PACF funding priorities: Community engagement, participation and leadership; patient focused and family-centred approaches; and is evidence-based and evidence-generating.
Public Health Research Institute of India
The SCIL Project: Saving Children, Improving Lives - Integrating women’s self-help groups in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in India
The SCIL Project emerged from conversations with key-stakeholders including the Government of India’s National Rural Health Mission, CBOs working in women’s health and microeconomic financing, and advisors including Dr Arthur Amman, President of Global Strategies for HIV prevention, and Dr Sten Vermund, Director, Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. It advances the idea that women’s grassroots movements will serve to advance health, improve access, and create a platform for advocacy around HIV prevention, stigma reduction, and PMTCT.
The project integrates thousands of self-help groups (SHG) into a powerful referral network to increase rural PMTCT uptake in rural India and builds on existing infrastructure and community networks developed over the past decade. This demonstration project will mobilise communities, train peer-health-educators from SHG groups, create and motivate referral SHG-based networks, and operate mobile medical camps providing integrated antenatal care and PMTCT services for pregnant women in 144 rural villages in Mysore District.
Rajasthan Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS (RNP+), India
The Sneh Project: Strengthening home based psychosocial care and support to Children Affected by HIV
The project will be named “Sneh”, a Hindi word that translates to “Affection” in English.
Children Affected by HIV (CAHIV) in India are highly vulnerable and have limited ability to confront the adverse situations created by their status. These CAHIV have specific health, nutrition, mental, emotional and sociological needs and their only source of physical and emotional support is their family. While families try their best to take care of their children, they find themselves constrained in providing effective mental and emotional support as they lack the necessary skills and capacity.
This project proposes to work with the families of CAHIV under the age of 18 years to build their capacity to provide the much-needed psychosocial support to these children and strengthen their home based care. Sneh will engage mothers living with HIV in delivering training and counselling to such families. Access to services will also be strengthened: by linking the families with existing service channels and orienting the service providers towards the specific needs of these children and their families. The project will produce a capacity building model and toolkit that is tested for efficacy and attempt to scale up the concept through training of other state level networks of people living with HIV in India.
Kenya AIDS Intervention Prevention Project Group (KAIPPG)
HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment, and Stigma Reduction through Active Community Participation Project
This three-year project will take place in the Busia, Mumias and Butere districts of Kenya. It will target HIV/AIDS infected and affected children and adolescents between 3-19 years, and their families. Project activities will include workshops, training, home visits, and community mobilisation and information dissemination through various media such as mass media, songs, dramas and story telling.
The project’s objectives are to:
- improve quality of life for 1800 children under five years through educating mothers and care givers on HIV/AIDS treatment, nutrition and positive living
- improve nutritional status and reproductive knowledge of 900 adolescents through education on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, positive living and nutrition
- improve future socio-economic security of HIV/AIDS affected children through training 900 parents/guardians on legal and financial issue
- reduce stigma and discrimination by training 900 young people
- improve quality of care for PLWHA in the community through training 150 community volunteers on home-based care skills.
IPPF and Family Health Options Kenya
Adolescents Count Today (ACT) – Meeting the sexual and reproductive health and rights needs of adolescents living with and affected by HIV in Kenya
This initiative Adolescents Count Today (ACT) seeks to improve the quality of life of 8000 adolescents (aged 10-19 years) living with or affected by HIV in Eldoret, Thika and Nakuru, Kenya. It aims to ensure that the ever-increasing rhetoric on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (including HIV) is met with sustained action.
The project will improve the sexual and reproductive health, care and rights of adolescents and families living with or affected by HIV. The innovation lies in some of the programmatic emphasis including:
- integrated HIV and sexual and reproductive service delivery for adolescents and gender transformative approaches that empower boys and girls to prevent HIV infection and sexual ill health
- mitigating the impact of HIV by providing access to micro-credit and income-generating activities – aimed especially at young women and girls
- providing skills and mentorship training by utilising the infrastructure or the Federation to support young people in issues beyond the health sector
- strengthening programmes aimed at addressing the prevention needs of young people living with HIV.
Partners in Health, Lesotho
Improving Access to Care for Women in Rural Lesotho
Partners in Health (PIH) will expand its women’s reproductive health and HIV care programme in the mountains of Lesotho over three years. This builds on a pilot in Bobete and takes PIH’s Traditional Birth Attendant training programme to seven clinical sites serving up to 350,000 people.
The project will increase demand for sexual and reproductive health services from women who may have never accessed medical care in the past. Trained TBAs will offer women HIV prevention information, opportunities for VCT, access to STI treatment, and, where necessary, prenatal care and HIV treatment.
During the project the TBAs should counsel and accompany women through over 4,000 pregnancies. PIH hopes that they will reduce the number of HIV transmissions from mother to child and increase the proportion of clinic-based births, which corresponds to a decrease in maternal mortality. PIH will share the project outcomes with the wider maternal health community to promote the role of TBAs in other SRH programmes.
Download a case study on this project here
Women Friendly Initiative, Nigeria
Integrating HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Bauchi State, Northern Nigeria
This two-year project will integrate and sustain access to key reproductive health services within the HIV/SRH structure in two local government areas in Bauchi state Nigeria. It will develop a working model of HIV/SRH service integration based in a public facility operating as a Centre of Excellence but with user-friendly design in the project’s service outlets. WFI will establish a Reproductive Health-HIV Advocacy Alliance (RHIVAA) to strengthen community buy-in and ownership and stimulate and sustain demand (particularly among vulnerable and marginalized groups) for appropriate HIV-SRH services.
The sexual health of the target communities will be improved, with a reduction in unintended pregnancies in particular. The project will strengthen referral linkages using community based agents and ‘expert clients’. Outreach to communities will be undertaken by depot holders and trained providers (both public and private). Overall WFI hopes to stimulate interest in practical approaches to integrated service delivery in an environment with no existing structures for HIV/SRH service delivery structures.
International Medical Foundation (IMF), Uganda
Yer Yotkom (Choose Health) Project: Empowering communities in Northern Uganda to demand quality sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services
The Yer Yotkom Project provides an integrated model of community and clinic based services in SRH. The first PACF programme area, primary prevention of HIV, is addressed through empowering community members, 80% HIV positive, to provide primary HIV prevention and SRH information, education and communication (IEC) to their peers. The second PACF Programme Area, reproductive choice for PLWHIV, is addressed through clinical and outreach provision of family planning accompanied by SRH IEC, with strong referral linkages to HIV and STI testing and treatment services, with targeted sessions for PLWHIV and other high-risk groups.
The project will deliver community Involvement through peer-to-peer teaching, expert patients, and community consultation teams. Its patient-focus will be evident through its use of community score cards, community feedback sessions, ‘expert patients’, and capacity building with all providers with an approach grounded in patient empowerment and patient-provider dialogue. Integrated IEC on FP/HIV/STIs will be produced, and referral links to related services will be developed.
Wakiso Integrated Rural Development Association (WIRDA), Uganda
Enhancing integration of HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services via paired groups of Private Midwives (PMWs) and Village Health Teams (VHTs) in rural Uganda
WIRDA proposes to enhance the integration of HIV and SRH services via paired groups of Private Midwives (PMWs) and Village Health Teams (VHTs). The project goal is to conduct research comparing the quality of care and cost effectiveness of the integrated HIV and SRH services delivery by paired groups of private midwives and VHTs with the service delivery of government health centres. The project objective is to demonstrate that utilization of PMWs and VHTs to provide integrated HIV and SRH services will lead to significant improvement in accessibility to and continuity of quality of care and cost effective services for men and women at risk of HIV or living with HIV compared to services offered in health centres. The expected output will be a trained and motivated cadre of paired groups of 80 PMWs and 160 VHT members promoting integrated HIV and SRH services delivery in rural Wakiso District. They will reach over 300,000 men and women at risk of HIV or living with HIV over a three-year period. One outcome will be a demonstrated effectiveness of paired, trained and motivated PMWs and VHTs in delivering quality of care and cost effective integrated HIV and SRH services for men and women at risk of HIV or living with HIV that surpass those services of health centres.
Miroi Growers Cooperative Society, Uganda
Improving the community’s access to and take-up of PMTCT and related services
The main strategies of this project include:
- mobilization of communities to create a friendly environment for HIV-positive mothers
- freedom from discrimination and stigmatisation
- training of community health workers to provide quality health services, and to become advocates for gender mainstreaming of all sexual and reproductive health activities
- empowering girls and women to make informed sexual and reproductive health decisions.
Hodi, Zambia
Strengthening community-based HIV prevention and reproductive health services for adolescents
Zambia still ranks among the world’s poorest countries, with more than half of the population living in marked poverty. Extremely high HIV infection rates (14.3% of the adult population) exist in the context of a very weak health delivery system. About 20% of HIV infection is due to mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, at birth, or while breastfeeding. Quality family planning and reproductive health services are not available in all parts of the country and are not always well linked to HIV/AIDS interventions.
This project aims to improve reproductive health services in the target communities by promoting demand for access to services and products, particularly among adolescents. HIV prevention will also be addressed through behaviour change communication strategies.