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About the Challenge Facility

Challenge Facility Objectives

Communities are coming together to advocate and improve their own access to health services and increasingly organizing to plan and deliver effective healthcare on a large scale, therefore, considerable contributing to improving access for most vulnerable and marginalized groups, and ultimately creating a highly effective community health systems.

The role, voice and engagement of communities is becoming more vital in health systems; in order to support the Global Fund in this, the Challenge Facility provides small grants to CSOs in countries eligible for Global Fund funding.

The Stop TB Partnership's Challenge Facility for Civil Society (CFCS) targets civil society organizations that give a voice to people affected by TB and communities that want to get involved in Global Fund grants.

In order to deliver on this vision, the CFCS aims to assist civil society organizations by providing grants of not more than US$20,000 for projects that will deliver against one or more of the below:

  • A. Equip representatives of TB-affected communities (and other civil society constituency representatives) serving on the Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) with tools and latest knowledge in TB, MDR-TB and HIV associate TB for proper representation at CCM meetings;
  • B. Lead the creation of the seat for TB-affected people in Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in a country where this constituency is not yet represented (as per revised GF CCM guidelines);
  • C. Prepare representatives of TB-affected communities to join the country TB programme review mission, or a country mission of the Global Fund; ; or strengthen the capacity of TB Civil Society Constituency for effective engagement in all TB-related (policy, planning, budgeting, monitoring and review) processes and meetings in the country;
  • D. Prepare representatives of TB-affected communities to meaningfully participate in the development of national strategy plans of their country;
  • E. Ensure participation in the ´country dialogue` prior to Global Fund concept note development, ensure that communities or civil society representatives for TB are part of the writing group of the GF concept note or the group reviewing the concept note;
  • F. Brief CCM members and other stakeholders on community system strengthening (CSS), GF´s human rights and gender equality policy, the promotion of patient-centered models, etc.
  • G. Ensure civil society participation, including key affected populations (KAP), are part of the Phase 2 Renewal process of Global Fund grants, and/or ensure their participation in other Global Fund processes within the means possible of the organization;
  • H. Strengthen capacity of individuals and civil society organizations to monitor Global Fund grants that have a TB component, including monitoring of drug stock-outs and other challenges.

    • Proposals are selected by an independent selection committee composed of a maximum of 10 individuals from communities affected by TB, NGOs from developing and developed countries, NTP managers, multilateral or technical agencies.

  • The Stop TB Partnership Secretariat commits to efficiently manage CFCS resources by:
    • Identifying and stimulating the submission of high quality and competitive applications by developing selection criteria that promote the collaboration with local health services / TB programs, strengthen the autonomy and responsibility of local people and demonstrate the greatest promise of project sustainability.
    • Holding grantees accountable for abiding by project milestones, e.g. only grantees whose project review demonstrates distinctive impact are eligible to apply for a second grant
    • Strengthening links between grant recipients and local authorities (e.g., health services), to ensure there is ongoing government support for civil society contributions to the fight against TB.
    • Bringing together different organizations and grant holders to exchange best practices in mobilizing communities and managing projects
    • Using simple project evaluation processes and criteria that assess project results, the CFCS will extract lessons learned and promote promising practices to strengthen civil society engagement in TB advocacy and improve the following year’s grant making and evaluation processes

Concrete Deliverables

Together with Challenge Facility grantees we plan to:

  • increase the number of TB actors actively involved in Global Fund processes in their respective country
  • engage, and increase the meaningful representation of TB affected communities and other constituencies in CCMs
  • involve people affected by TB into decision making processes and bodies at different levels (e.g. Program Reviews, national working groups, NSP, etc.)
  • contribute towards national strategies and Global Fund applications having a strong TB-human rights & gender focus
  • increase feedback input to the Stop TB Partnership bodies about the challenges or achievements of the TB interventions in the area where they are operating
  • develop a direct communication channel between civil society and partners to raise any issues arising from stock outs or other challenges related to drug management & commodities and programmatic administration of TB and related services.
Five rounds of grants have been awarded since 2007.