Elton John AIDS Foundation inviting Applications from NGOs to support Refugees Living with HIV

Deadline: 01-Sep-2024

The Elton John AIDS Foundation is inviting applications from non-governmental organisations for projects that aim to provide comprehensive support for Key Populations (KPs) and People living with HIV (PLHIV) refugees from Ukraine in the eligible countries of implementation.

The Elton John AIDS Foundation puts the people and places most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS at the heart of their response – including the LGBTQ+ community, young people, and people who use drugs.

The Elton John AIDS Foundation (“the Foundation”) in partnership with Gilead Sciences, in September 2019, launched the ground-breaking RADIAN initiative to meaningfully address new HIV infections and deaths from AIDS-related illnesses in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA). RADIAN focuses on action, investment, and resources to improve the quality of life, prevention, and care for people at risk of or living with HIV in the region. The Elton John AIDS Foundation and Gilead have an established presence in EECA and extensive experience working effectively with key local stakeholders in the region, including through the EECA Key Populations Fund since 2017.

Under the RADIAN 2.0 program, the Foundation calls for grant proposals for projects aimed at providing refugees from Ukraine with access to quality HIV prevention, testing, and treatment services, as well as addressing structural barriers such as limited access to government services and stigma.

This grant competition presents an opportunity for registered organizations and initiative groups working in healthcare and social services to develop and implement innovative projects that improve the lives of refugees from Ukraine, including KPs and PLHIV, and provide them with access to essential services during the crisis.

The Foundation is looking to support evidence-informed interventions with the goal to measurably improve access to HIV services for KPs and PLHIV from Ukraine, and to improve their mental and social well-being in receiving countries.

Objectives

• Proposed interventions must contribute to Objective 1 and at least one of the other three objectives:
  • Deliver high-quality community-based services to address the unmet HIV-related needs of KPs and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine;
  • Address structural drivers of the HIV epidemic to improve the quality of life of KPs and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine and ultimately improve HIV-related health outcomes;
  • Strengthen health systems to sustainably improve care for KPs and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine;
  • Strengthen community systems to deliver community-led care to Ukrainian refugees effectively and increase access to sustainable funding.

Funding Information

• The maximum budget that projects can apply is: $500,000.

Duration

• Applicants can apply for projects lasting up to 24 months.

What should projects do? 

• Applicants should identify the most significant HIV-related need(s) faced by one or more of the key populations (KPs) among refugees from Ukraine who are most affected by HIV/AIDS: people who use drugs (PWUD), sex workers (SW), men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender people (TG); and people living with HIV (PLHIV). Sexual partners of individuals from these populations are also a priority.
• Applicants should provide an objective analysis of the context in the proposed location(s) of implementation to demonstrate the scope and urgency of the identified problem(s), and why the identified problem(s) are not adequately addressed through existing government or non-governmental programmes.
• Applications need to propose evidence-informed solutions with measurable outcomes that contribute to achieving Objective 1 and at least one of the other three specified objectives.

Result Framework

• Objective 1 “Deliver high-quality community-based services to address the unmet HIV-related needs of KPs and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine”
  • Under Objective 1, projects should address specific HIV-related needs of one or more KPs and/or PLHIV refugees from Ukraine in eligible countries. Illustrative interventions could include, but are not limited to, the following:
    • Providing peer outreach services (physical and/or online) to Ukrainian refugees to identify KPs and PLHIV among them and offer HIV counseling, prevention, testing and linkage services;
    • Increasing accessibility to HIV testing services (HTS) for Ukrainian refugees by providing community-based and mobile rapid HTS, and implementing creative HIV testing approaches, such as home-based rapid self-testing, or HTS in refugee camps and other closed settings while ensuring confidentiality and voluntary consent;
    • Providing high-yield HIV testing services, such as PLHIV partner notification and testing (index testing), social network testing strategy, enhanced peer outreach, optimized case finding and other interventions.
    • Linking KPs to the existing differentiated prevention services tailored to the needs of specific KPs and their networks, or providing direct services where they are not available: harm reduction through needle and syringe programmes, abscess care, hepatitis B and C testing, STI screening, PrEP and PEP dispensing, contraceptive services and female hygiene items, condom distribution, and other services;
    • Effectively linking KPs and PLHIV to government and private health and social services available in the receiving country by providing information, counseling, navigation and translation services to Ukrainian refugees;
    • Organizing peer support groups, information activities, individual and groups counseling sessions for KPs and PLHIV to reduce self-stigma and improve mental and social well-being of Ukrainian refugees.
• Objective 2 “Address structural drivers of the HIV epidemic to improve the quality of life of KPs and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine and ultimately improve HIV-related health outcomes”
  • Under Objective 2, projects should address structural drivers of the HIV epidemic as they relate to KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine in the receiving countries. Such structural drivers are laws and policies, criminalization of certain behaviours, religious and cultural norms, violence, lack of economic opportunities, reduced mobility, and social and mass media information. Structural drivers are acting at the macro level, community level, or both. Illustrative interventions could include, but are not limited to, the following:
    • Interventions at the macro level
      • Changing policies and legislation that inequitably affect KPs, PLHIV and their subpopulations (e.g. refugees) by criminalizing certain behaviours, infringing people’s rights, and preventing access to HIV and other health and social services thus increasing the risks of HIV among these populations.
      • Addressing justice and law enforcement authorities that may abuse their powers in interpretation and application of the laws and regulations against KP and PLHIV refugees. This is particularly important in closed settings, such as refugee camps and detention centres.
      • Changing cultural and religious norms that normalize gender roles and stigmatizing attitudes towards KPs (particularly MSM and transgender people), PLHIV and their subgroups.
      • Modifying public information, including social and mass media, to change gender norms that promotes gendered violence, reduce xenophobia towards refugees, or correctly inform the public about KPs, their subpopulations, their needs and roles in the HIV epidemic.
    • Interventions at the community level
      • Reducing stigma and discrimination, including self-stigma in KP and PLHIV refugee communities and service provider bias (health, social, judiciary, law enforcement and other) that results in stigma and discrimination enacted against KP and PLHIV refugees.
      • Improving economic opportunities that enable KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine to obtain the same standard of living with the rest of the population in receiving countries, thus reducing risky behaviours, such as transactional sex or drug use; interventions could include helping KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine with social and language skills, assistance with employment, developing business skills or vocational training.
      • Improving the level of education for KP and PLHIV refugees, which is an enabler for economic opportunities for some populations, and for accessing knowledge about risky behaviours and skills to prevent HIV. Specific interventions may include referral and placement of KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine into educational programmes available in local communities.
    • Improving access to healthcare, which is a function of legal and insurance status of refugees, distance, costs, physical and language barriers, time schedules and unavailability of services resulting in unattended health conditions, including untreated HIV, STIs, TB, and hepatitis.
• Objective 3 “Strengthen health systems to sustainably improve care for KPs and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine”
  • Under Objective 3, projects should strengthen the capacity of local health systems by improving one of the following:
    • Human resources, or the number of people available to provide quality services for PLHIV and KP refugees, and building the knowledge and skills of health providers on PLHIV-, KPand refugee-friendly services;
    • Finance, or the amount of funding available to pay salaries, purchase medicines and other commodities, and support facilities and equipment for PLHIV and KP services, including NGO-based services, and how this funding is used (e.g. using blended finance and innovative finance models, including pay for performance to align incentives);
    • Governance, or the basis on which decisions are made and services to KP and PLHIV refugees are provided (e.g. strategies), as well as mechanisms of how the decisions are made (e.g. the existence of patient boards at the facility level, or improving KP representation in coordinating councils at the country level);
    • Information for the allocation of resources and other decision-making, e.g. availability of biobehavioral data on the needs of KP and PLHIV refugees in the receiving countries;
    • Supply chain, or the processes to procure, transport, store and distribute ART and other commodities to service providers, to reduce bottlenecks and other logistical issues (given the scale and complexity of national supply chains, any activities focused on improving health system supply chains may be focused on discrete supply chain elements and tailored to local conditions and resource gaps; activities may include policy changes and resource reallocations that drive larger changes in the logistics chain); and/or
    • Service delivery, or the kinds of services, their quality, accessibility and coverage among KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine in the receiving countries.
• Objective 4 “Strengthen community systems to deliver community-led care to Ukrainian refugees effectively and increase access to sustainable funding”
  • Under Objective 3, projects should strengthen the capacity of the civil society organizations (CSO) or community-based initiative groups to provide services to KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine in the receiving countries by improving one of the following:
    • The quality of community-based HIV services by training CSO staff and volunteers on the most up-to-date effective approaches along the HIV cascade. These may include effective outreach methods, such as social network strategies, enhanced outreach and online outreach that allow engaging the most hard-to-reach KP subpopulations, including people who use new stimulant psychoactive substances, or MSM involved in chemsex or sex work; HIV testing methodologies to increase the testing yield; ART linkage strategies, such as same-day ART initiation; ensuring ART retention, such as home visiting nursing program; HIV prevention strategies, such as PrEP; and others.
    • Sustainability of community-based services and project results by building CSO’s capacity to access government funding, implementing alternative funding mechanisms (social entrepreneurship, crowd funding mechanisms, etc.), and securing private funding through corporate donations or grants, public-private partnerships, and other mechanisms.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligibility criteria for funding are:
  • Implementation Location: They welcome applications for projects implementing in any of the following countries: Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
    • Applicants must be based in the country(ies) of implementation, but may partner with organizations in another country or outside of the EECA region for specific technical assistance.
    • Applicants may implement their project in one or more cities or regions in the country of implementation.
    • Projects may only implement in multiple countries if they provide a compelling argument for why a multi-country approach is optimal (for example, if the project is implementing standard interventions across several countries; or if the project is focused on ensuring the continuity of services for KP and PLHIV refugees from Ukraine across several countries).
  • Type of applicant: They encourage applications from non-profit, academic and research organisations. Ineligible entities include individuals and governments.
  • Consortia: Applications are welcomed from consortia – or groups of partners working together to achieve the objectives – where each consortium partner brings unique strengths to achieve the expected results. Consortia should designate a lead applicant organisation to submit the application. Applications are equally welcomed from solo applicant organisations.
  • Registration and Bank Account: The Applicant must be a registered entity and must have an active organisational bank account, separate for the project. Unregistered community groups with a strong track record of achieving results are welcome to apply, but must apply in consortium with a fiscal agent, which must be an officially registered entity.
  • Project Timetable: The proposed grant should be implemented and all funds disbursed within two years from the date the grant agreement is signed with the Applicant or by December 30, 2026, whichever is earlier.
  • Completeness and Language: All Application information and supporting documentation must be submitted in English; any other language will be considered ineligible. Written submissions must be completed in full to be considered eligible for review; incomplete submissions will be considered ineligible.
  • Number of Applications: Applicants with more than one project idea may submit multiple Applications. Please note each idea requires a separate Application and applicants may submit no more than two Applications.
  • Budget and Eligible Costs: The Foundation will assess each Application’s budget in relation to the proposed objectives and results. Grants are open to supporting all costs that are justified in relation to achieving project objectives. Grant funds cannot be used to purchase or procure essential medicines (e.g. antiretroviral therapy), or purchase real estate property. The maximum budget that projects can apply is up to $500,000.

For more information, visit Elton John AIDS Foundation.