Key and vulnerable populations at the heart of the fight against pandemics
L’Initiative is a funding mechanism implemented by Expertise France launched at the end of 2011, which complements the work of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. It provides technical assistance and catalytic funding to around forty Global Fund recipient countries to improve the effectiveness of their grants and strengthen the health impact of funded programs. In this way, L’Initiative contributes to ensuring the effectiveness of pandemic responses and health systems.
Each year, L’Initiative publishes three complementary but distinct calls for proposals, to select catalytic programs aimed at changing healthcare practices and policies. It also aims to bring innovative solutions to scale.
This call (23-2024-INIT-APR-02) focuses on strengthening the role of key and vulnerable populations to improve their health and environment. By key populations, L’Initiative means those most at-risk or affected by at least one of the three diseases, and who are stakeholders involved in the response. They generally have reduced access to services and may be criminalized and/or marginalized. Other vulnerable populations are those who are more vulnerable in a particular context and who do not fall into the categories mentioned above, including children and adolescent girls, young girls and women, and people living with disabilities.
Under this call for proposals, L’Initiative will therefore be particularly focused on the promotion and prioritization of measures aimed at:
- Capacity and skills strengthening of national and community actors;
- Developing population empowerment strategies to increase the impact of health policies and services, and support services adapted to the needs of key and vulnerable populations;
- Developing and implementing tailored and targeted advocacy plans for systemic consideration of the needs of key and vulnerable populations in the project’s intervention strategies;
- Effective involvement and representation of key and vulnerable populations in coordination and decision-making mechanisms;
- Promoting community-based approaches by and for key and vulnerable populations in order to provide them with appropriate services at community level;
- All sexual and reproductive health and rights activities related to the three pandemics.
To find out more about the application procedure for L’Initiative’s calls for proposals, two information sessions are organized online, on December 12, 2023 at 10:00am (UTC +1) and on January 9, 2024 at 10:00am (UTC +1).