World Bank funding secured for Central Asia – a first!
27 June 2007
The World Bank has agreed to fund an Alliance project aimed at reducing the spread of HIV and mitigating the impact of AIDS in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The announcement secures the Alliance secretariat’s first World Bank funding and marks a successful outcome to the difficult process of establishing programming in Central Asia.
The project will promote the meaningful and active involvement of affected communities in the design and implementation of HIV prevention, treatment and care activities. It will do this by strengthening the organisational and institutional capacities of the region’s four leading national networks and organisations of people living with HIV. They will then act as intermediaries to local projects focusing on community-based care and support.
The four organisations are the Kazakh Union of People Living with HIV (a civic foundation in Kazakhstan); Positive Initiative (a civic charitable foundation in Kyrgyzstan); Guli Surkh (a non-governmental organisation in Tajikistan); and Ishonch va Khaet (a non-governmental organisation of people living with HIV in Uzbekistan).
The project will also work towards increasing the involvement of affected communities in policy development and advocacy for more effective and inclusive programming. Key to our success will be capacity-building support provided by project partners including the Alliance secretariat and Alliance Ukraine, the All-Ukrainian PLHA Network (Ukraine), and the Anti AIDS Association of Legal Entities (Kyrgyzstan).
The project has been awarded a total of US$650,474 and will run for 18 months, from July 2007 to December 2008.
