Regional programme

Isabel Molina, president of the Association for the Defence of Women (ASOPRODEMU), greets a fellow member. © 2004 Gideon Mendel for International HIV/AIDS Alliance

The Alliance has worked in Latin America since 1994 and in the Caribbean since 2003. It supports the region’s effort to contain the spread of the HIV epidemic and thus contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Alliance operates through local non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and community-based organisations (CBOs), with the aim to increase their capacity to carry out HIV prevention and care work, both through direct implementation and through creating an improved institutional and policy environment. The Alliance in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region works mainly with key populations, those most vulnerable and most likely to have an impact on the epidemic.

What we do

The overall goal of the regional programme is to strengthen the HIV response among those most vulnerable to the epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean. These groups are gay and other men who have sex with men, sex workers and people living with HIV. The programme aims to:

  • build the advocacy capacity of these groups in Boliva, Peru and Haiti
  • strengthen south-to-south collaboration and lesson sharing
  • strengthen the capacity and coordination of regional HIV community networks.

This phase of the regional programme started in 2005 and includes the following components:

  • an initiative bringing together the seven regional community networks working on HIV
  • support to strengthen the Latin America and Caribbean sex worker network
  • a training programme to increase the involvement of gay and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in HIV decision-making spaces lead by the LAC regional gay and MSM network
  • a Knowledge Centre strengthening south-to-south collaboration and spearheading the development of materials for key populations
  • a research project on World Bank links to civil society
  • support to develop and implement advocacy plans with the national platform of people living with HIV/AIDS in Haiti and with key population groups in Peru and Bolivia.

What we have achieved

The programme is just nearing the end of its second year and already significant results have been achieved. Over 60 gay and other men who have sex with men have been trained in a series of three workshops covering project design, advocacy and focused prevention interventions. Many of the participants have replicated the training within their own organisations, re-designed their organisational strategic plans and/or are now implementing newly-funded Global Fund projects.

Thirty-four community activists with significant experience working on HIV have been trained with the skills to become regional consultants. A small number of these new consultants have since carried out their first consultancy with varying civil society organisations in the region.

REDTRASEX (The Latin America and Caribbean sex worker network) has been supported to participate in key decision-making spaces in the last 12 months, such as the UN high-level meeting on AIDS in New York, in May 2006, and the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, in August 2006. Additionally, the Alliance has facilitated training for REDTRASEX’s members on communication, project design, and good governance.

Local and national level advocacy plans developed by people living with HIV, sex workers and men who have sex with men are now being implemented across Peru, Bolivia and Haiti (only people living with HIV).

Toolkits on advocacy, voluntary counselling and testing and participatory community assessments have been adapted or developed, and then validated by those key populations who will ultimately use the finished products.

The different LAC regional community networks have received support to coordinate their work in certain spaces and have jointly produced policy papers on access to treatment and the level of civil society involvement in Global Fund country coordinating mechanisms.

Future plans

The programme will continue in 2007 without major alteration.