KHANA wins $6.5 million direct funding

02 November 2006

Alliance linking organisation Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance (KHANA) has been awarded $6.5 million from USAID over the next three years to continue its HIV prevention and care work in Cambodia.

The funding consolidates KHANA’s current USAID-funded programme, which includes two elements: integrated HIV prevention with home-based care for people living with HIV and orphans and vulnerable children; and focused prevention work with men who have sex with men, sex workers and drug users – including injecting drug users.

The award marks a transition to direct funding for KHANA. In the past, USAID has funded KHANA through the Alliance Secretariat. Now, KHANA will contract the Alliance Secretariat to provide ongoing technical support. The Alliance Secretariat provided support to KHANA to conceptualise and develop the proposal and accompanying budget.

Ensuring comprehensive services

The programme aims to provide high-quality prevention, care and mitigation activities. This includes:

  • working with target groups (at risk populations, sex workers and clients, men who have sex with men and drug users) in order to reduce risk behaviour across its project sites; and
  • home-based care teams offering health and psychosocial care and access to income generating activities to improve quality of life for people living with HIV, their families and communities.

The programme is also working to strengthen the leadership and capacity of civil society, including people living with HIV. This is to enable them to implement and contribute more effectively to policy development on HIV prevention, AIDS care, treatment and impact alleviation in project sites. The programme is also strengthening KHANA’s technical and organisational capacity so it can offer similar support to its partners. KHANA is also supporting CPN+ (a network run by and for people living with HIV in Cambodia) to take a more active leadership role.

Finally, the programme aims to improve the environment for HIV and AIDS work at provincial and national level through advocacy, policy development, and sharing of best practice. It is working with national coordinating bodies and key stakeholders, in partnership with 30 civil society organisations who are direct partners of KHANA, who are receiving grants, technical and organisational capacity-building support from KHANA.