This first L’Initiative visit to Lebanon provided an opportunity to follow up with ongoing projects and to identify potential areas of collaboration with Lebanese stakeholders working on the responses to HIV and tuberculosis.
A kick-off meeting was held with SIDC for the “Gateway to Better Health – Improving Access to Health Care for Vulnerable Populations in Lebanon” project, which is being implemented in partnership with AJEM Lebanon, Salama_lb, and Dar Al Amal. The objective of the project is to optimize and expand access to quality HIV information, care, and treatment services, free of stigma and discrimination, for vulnerable populations in Lebanon.
The visit was also an opportunity to give an overview of the support L’Initiative can provide, particularly through its Expertise Channel, to Lebanese civil society organizations that are recipients of the Global Fund regional grant entitled “Nadoum,” which is supported by Frontline AIDS.
Meeting with Gilles Genre-Grandpierre Director of AFD – Agence Française de Développement in Lebanon.
Working session with SIDC Lebanon project leader of “Passerelle pour une meilleure santé – Améliorer l’accès aux soins de santé pour les populations vulnérables au Liban” and its partners.
L’Initiative has been working with Lebanon since 2018, primarily through project funding. Current projects:
- “Challenging barriers in decentralized care and advocacy for vulnerable populations in Lebanon,” sponsored by Marsa Sexual Health Center in partnership with the Lebanese Family Planning Association for Development and Family Empowerment (LFPADE); Qorras; HalTek.
The project aims to decentralize access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to the Bekaa and Tyre regions and reduce barriers to service access for key and vulnerable populations in Lebanon, such as girls, women, men who have sex with men (MSM), LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and refugees. - “FORSS (which stands for: train, monitor, support): community mobilization to combat HIV in the MENA region” (other countries involved include Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritania) supported by Solidarité Sida in partnership with the MENA International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC-MENA), RdR-Maroc (national harm reduction organization) in Morocco; M-Coalition (via the Arab Foundation For Freedoms and Equality (AFE) in Lebanon; ATP+ (Tunisian positive prevention organization) in Tunisia; Al Shehab Institution for Comprehensive Development (Al Shehab) in Egypt; AGD (organization of development managers) in Mauritania.
- “Gateway to Better Health – Improving Access to Health Care for Vulnerable Populations in Lebanon” led by SIDC in partnership with AJEM Lebanon, Salama_lb, Dar Al Amal.