The Global Fund in partnership with some Civil Society Organizations have partnered to strengthen Cameroon’s engagement plan and Global fund strategies for key populations.
These key populations include people living with HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The program also takes into consideration youths in other diversities, including orphans, vulnerable persons, sex workers, youth doing drugs, and the LGBTQ department. The session was also an opportunity to tackle the challenge of stigma and discrimination surrounding members of the key population.
The partner CSO’s include; Y+ Global, CAGEAD, ReCAJ+, and representatives from NGO’s. This was during a three-day session at the CBC Resource Center in Yaounde on December 11 to 13, 2024.
The objective of the meeting was to look into partnerships and see how to plan for the next two years. Meanwhile they had previously developed an engagement plan and so wanted to revise it and work closely with the communities and young people to get feedback.
Senior programs officer for Y+ Global, Gabriella Romero pointed that being the only Youth led consortium under the Global Fund, the idea was to support the voices of young people in spaces where decisions that affect their lives are being made.
For the next three years, Romero and team intend to find ways of working together on activities they want to implement, what they want to achieve and how they can find the link between the work they are doing instead of staying isolated.
She explained that global barrier that young people face is limited access to information, language and the complex structures of the Global Fund.
“A big part of the work we are doing is translating the information of the Global Fund to Youth friendly documents, explanations and mechanisms so that they can understand how they can engage in the Global Fund processes” Romero said.
Executive Director of ReCAJ+, Bivina Mvondo Maxime recounted that previously, there was no Youth representative in the CCM in Cameroon and it is only in 2023 that together with her organization they effectively started engaging themselves in defending the rights of youth.
“With this consultation and three days meeting, I believe there is hope” she said.
She also highlighted that Communication channels were not really effective before “but I think things will change after this program because we have understood that it is really important to engage young people themselves and not their representatives”. And to improve communication channels to understand their problems so that they should be able to report them up at the CCM.
According to the Project Manager of CAGEAD, Ngongba Assumta Lum, they are in the first year of the project and within this period they developed an engagement plan with aim to generate and use data on HIVAIDS and Malaria with the community.
They also envisaged holding stakeholders and representatives responsible so that they can be accountable to the people they are representing in the decision-making platforms.
“We want to see how we can make Global Fund information accessible for these young key populations and also for them to look at the Global Fund’s documents as guidance for then to also carry out activities within the platform that they work” Ngongba explained.
NGO Representative, Belobo Ayissi Joseph emphasized that youth ought to play an important role at the ICN with their recent representation within the institution. “The idea is to ensure that these young people we support are always present in strategic structures of the ICN”.
With the ICN having strategic structures like the executive office and strategic monitoring, Ayissi highlighted that it was important to encourage young people to take up positions in the strategic bodies, at that level, their voices will resonate more. “As members, it is our duty to encourage this- to give space to young people so that they can take on these roles”.
Worth mentioning that the program expands beyond Cameroon to Ukraine and Mongolia.