U.S. Embassy PEPFAR Small Grants Office Offering Community-Led Monitoring Grant for HIV Services in Eswatini

Section 1: Program Description

The U.S. Embassy’s PEPFAR Small Grants office is pleased to announce an open competition for organizations to submit applications to carry out a community-led monitoring (CLM) program.

Priority Region: All four regions in Eswatini

This funding opportunity seeks to improve the quality of HIV treatment services in Eswatini through client feedback collected by trained community members.

The CLM program is funded through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  The U.S. Embassy in Eswatini administers the PEPFAR Small Grants program and is seeking proposals from registered local community-based organizations and other civil society groups, networks of key populations (KP), people living with HIV (PLHIV), people with disabilities, and other affected groups or community entities that gather quantitative and qualitative data about HIV services and whose mission and activities focus on HIV programming.

CLM is key to ensuring availability, access to, and delivery of quality HIV care and treatment services.  CLM will empower patients and communities to seek out treatment services, increase health literacy, expand engagement with health service delivery, support demand creation, and demand accountability from the health system to improve and deliver these services.

Potential grantees should have the capability to collaborate at the national level with PEPFAR and key community-focused stakeholders, and at the community level with health facility staff and clientele receiving PEPFAR-supported services.  Grantees should be able to implement a monitoring program to promote cooperation in addressing HIV-related issues, encourage constituencies to share their experiences, and facilitate joint action that makes a difference in the HIV response. 

CLM data will be collected using standardized tools and synthesized through a variety of methods that reveal insights from communities about challenges and/or issues identified with HIV service delivery at health facilities.  A standard activity of potential grantees will be to conduct CLM of HIV testing services, treatment services (including retention and VL), service provider perceptions, attitudes, and practices, and client satisfaction. Results from CLM will be presented and analyzed in collaboration between community representatives, providers and facility managers to ensure dialogue and help all sides in participating with identification and subsequent implementation and monitoring solutions and action items.

Program Objectives

PEPFAR Small Grants recognizes the importance of engaging with communities in the development and implementation of HIV programming.  PEPFAR will support at least one community-led monitoring initiative in each of Eswatini’s 4 regions.  PEPFAR is also supporting a national CLM steering committee in which the awardee organization will participate. In partnership with PEPFAR, the Ministry of Health, NERCHA, will conduct quarterly reviews of client feedback collected from all stakeholders (including CLM Small Grant recipients) to help the national health institutions and PEPFAR programs diagnose and pinpoint persistent problems, challenges, and barriers with service uptake of HIV treatment services.

To facilitate and ensure all regions and client constituencies are represented, PEPFAR is seeking community organizations from each region, and community groups with high unmet needs, to collect feedback on client experiences.