Deadline: 28-Aug-23
Aidsfonds invites organisations to submit their application for the ‘‘Bringing Kids Living with HIV to Care” call, to eliminate vertical transmission and ensuring all children living with HIV and their mothers should be able to live healthy and full lives.
The Aidsfonds’ paediatric HIV programme (2015 – 2025) is based on an unwavering commitment to end AIDS-related deaths and reduce new HIV infections in children (0-14). Currently the programmes work in five countries and seeks to expand to Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Indonesia/West Papua. They strive to eliminate vertical transmission and ensuring all children living with HIV and their mothers should be able to live healthy and full lives.
Objectives
- Aidsfonds together with partner organisations strengthen existing community-based responses and their collaboration with health facilities in paediatric HIV to find and support infants and children living with HIV, empower pregnant and lactating (young) women living with HIV and train health care workers, using the Kids to Care model as a best practice for paediatric HIV interventions.
- Aidsfonds and partner organisations advocate for governments and funders to invest in effective community based interventions and to provide access to and availability of HIV treatment and care including pDTG, EID. And for the integration of adolescent HIV-services into national SRHR and maternal health policies and services, including PMTCT, family planning.
- Building knowledge base through research and data collection to generate evidence and to influence future programming, policies and funding at national, regional, and international levels of other organisations, donors, and governments,
- Accelerate results by building strategic partnerships with national, international and global organisations including funders to amplify results and foster mutual learning (linking and learning) while securing vital resources to fuel community-driven solutions for forpaediatric HIV. Notably, Aidsfonds works with GNP+, Global Alliance to End Aids in children and EGPAF, PATA, ViiV Health.
Priorities
- The project proposal must be in line with the Kids to Care model and address the following funding priorities to which your application will be reviewed:
- Implementation of the Kids to Care model: A comprehensive project focus
- The project application must focus on the implementation of the Kids to Care model, a community-based intervention model to prevent vertical transmission and to ensure children- and mothers living with HIV can live a healthy life.
- The intervention model should identify children (aged 0-14) and mothers living with or exposed to HIV who are hard to reach and link both of them to care. Especially, young mothers (aged 10-24) and their children are more challenging to reach. Aidsfonds believes a life-cycle approach is needed to ensure that young mothers and their children do not fall through the gaps of being “not-yet-adults”, yet responsible for themselves and their children.
- Capacitated and supportive communities
- It is in communities where the children they aim to support are born, being raised, live in and are being cared for; it’s the community that knows how and where to find pregnant and lactating women exposed to or living with HIV and their children.
- Strengthening of community structures (such as schools, places of worship, networks of people living with HIV), community resource persons (teachers, religious or traditional leaders, peer mothers, community health workers) and engagement of communities is essential to ensure and improve familial and social support networks of children and their caregivers.
- Strengthened community-facility collaboration
- Tracing, referral and follow up are important for improved health outcomes of mothers and their children. To be able to ensure tracing, referral and follow up is done in the communities, health facilities need to have strong linkages to community structures and key community resource persons. However, in many health facilities these linkages do not exist or are weak and thus potential entry points in the community are not used to trace, refer and follow up on the children in the communities.
- Empowered pregnant and lactating women exposed to or living with HIV
- Pregnant and lactating women should have the knowledge, skills and a positive attitude in relation to treatment adherence, healthy living with HIV, and where to seek information and care.
- Health literacy on antenatal and postnatal care, including prevention of vertical transmission, treatment literacy and sexual and reproductive health and rights information is needed.
- Advocacy for access to and availability of HIV treatment and care
- Advocacy for access to and availability of HIV treatment and care, such as pDTG, Early Infant Diagnosis, and consistent and reliable stocks of ARVs and HIV tests are crucial to ensure children are tested and treated. Also, advocacy should target local and national governments to create buy in and scale-up community-based paediatric HIV interventions.
- Governments must prioritise children and adolescents in national action plans and budgets, and work with civil society, donors and other key stakeholders to ensure that programmes for children and adolescents are resourced effectively.
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Aidsfonds expects applicants to assess and capture the results and impact of their work, lessons learned and best practices and translate them into tangible advocacy and learning products and to document the impact of the project.
- Activities can include research, including baseline and endline research, documenting project evidence for advocacy e.g., to engage local, national, and international stakeholders to learn and adopt or invest in successful interventions.
- Sustainability of paediatric HIV intervention through the involvements of governments
- Strengthening of community-based structures is crucial in establishing a sustainable approach, as well as existing national policies, government workers and existing health facilities.
- Aidsfonds aims to fund contextualized project(s) sensitive to country specific needs, obstacles and challenges of children and mothers exposed to/ living with HIV. Aidsfonds together with the partner organisations, the Paediatric HIV Advisory Panel and governments works towards sustainable country specific solutions.
- Implementation of the Kids to Care model: A comprehensive project focus
Funding Information
- The total amount available under this call is €1,600,000, each application can include a maximum amount of €500,000. Aidsfonds anticipates funding a project in each country.
- The project must be implemented between the 1st of January 2024 – 31st of December 2025.
Eligibility Criteria
- Only applications that are received before the deadline will be checked on the eligibility criteria. To be eligible for funding, your organisation must meet the following criteria:
- Your organisation is registered as a not-for-profit and/ or non-governmental organisation in Malawi, Tanzania, Indonesia/West-Papua, or Zambia.
- Your organisation has a minimum of two years’ experience with paediatric HIV and implementation of community-based interventions, and this is in line with the objectives in your organisation’s constitution.
- Your organisation is a community-based organisation, or you are part of a consortium, led by a community-based organisation or NGO. There is a strong preference for applications from a group of organisations in a consortium. They aim to select CBO’s that work with (e.g through subgranting) smaller organisations at district level.
- The condition for a consortium is that the lead applicant is a non-governmental organization or a community-based organization.
- Technical support organisations, especially in research, monitoring, and evaluation (e.g., research institutes, universities capacity building institutes) may be included in the proposal or budget as third-party service providers.
- Your proposed project is implemented in a minimum of three of the highest HIV-prevalence districts in your country. For Indonesia, they aim to fund applications which will be working in West Papua Province and the districts within the province.
- Your application is submitted in English through Aidsfonds online grants application system, and includes all requested information and supporting documentation.
- Only one application per organisation is accepted for this call.
- Applicants and their applications that do not meet these criteria, will not be considered for further assessment, and will receive notification of this by Aidsfonds. All organisations engaging in a consortium must meet the eligibility criteria.
- They strongly encourage community-based organizations at district level to apply for this grant in a consortium with community-based organizations operating at national level as lead applicants. They support national based community-based organizations to sub-grant community-based organizations operating at district level, and to build their capacity throughout the project period.
Ineligibility Criteria
- The following organisations and institutions are not eligible to apply individually nor as part of a consortium:
- International NGOs (International Non-Governmental Organization).
- Local branches in Malawi, Tanzania, Indonesia/West Papua, and Zambia of international organisations.
- Individuals, or educational, political, governmental, or religious institutions.
- Private or profitable organisations or companies.
For more information, visit Aidsfonds.