The 1st Year Delegate Working Report from Liang Yanyan: Member for Developing Countries NGO Delegation, Representing Asia Pacific

Early 2007, Liang Yanyan nominated herself to compete the position of member for the Developing Countries NGO Delegation Asia Pacific Representative. Liang Yanyan received strong support from Beijing AIZHIXING Institute and Beijing YIRENPING Center.

The two NGOs jointly send the delegation a letter of supporting to show their support to me and they will support the expenses of communications regarding the position if I was selected. Furthermore, Liang Yanyan also received support from 35 Chinese grassroots NGOs and China National AIDS Joint Meeting of CSOs, which had more than 80 members at that time. APCASO also sent a letter of reference for Liang Yanyan.

In April 2007, Liang Yanyan was informed that she was finally selected as the delegation member representing Asia Pacific Region. The term of the membership is two year, until April 2009.

The mission of the delegation is represent the NGOs working in the developing countries working on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on the Global Fund Board. The Board is the supreme governance body of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, whose decision points will strongly influence the implementation and management of the Global Fund. The Board meeting will be held twice per year. The Board has 20 voting seats and 4 non-voting seats, and the Developing Countries NGO seat is one of the voting seats.

After Liang Yanyan was selected, she has accomplished a plenty of work to fulfill her duty as a delegation member. The detailed working report is the following part of this document. Liang Yanyan welcomes the suggestions of all the people to help her improve her future work. Let me then introduce in brief the reason why I resigned from the two supportive NGOs.

The First Year Working Report

April 2007, Liang Yanyan attended the 15th Board Meeting. The newly-selected delegation members met each other and discussed together the future development of the delegation for the first time.

I was selected as the Regional Focal Point in delegation meeting. In this Board Meeting, the delegation as a whole nominated the Board Member Elizabeth Mataka as the Vice-chair of the Board, and finally Ms. Mataka was selected as vice-chair by the Board. Ms. Mataka is an eminent female NGO leader. Since the 15th Board Member, Ms. Mataka has worked closely with the selected Chair of the Board, Mr. Rajat Gupta, the Board Member of the Private Sector seat to ameliorate the working effectiveness of the Global Fund Board, and promoted to Board to discuss and make decision on the issues of Malaria, Gender and Civil Society Participation.

August 2008, Liang Yanyan was sponsored by Beijing AIZHIXING Institute to attend the ICAAP 8. During the meeting, Liang Yanyan attended several sessions regarding the Global Fund, communicated with the NGO representatives and introduced the delegation to them.

She also improved her relationship with the Global Fund Secretariat staff.

September 2007, Liang Yanyan communicated with the Global Fund Secretariat to make efforts to attend the Global Fund EAP Meeting after she knew there would be a meeting during ICAAP in August.

Finally, Liang Yanyan was sponsored by Ford Foundation Beijing Office to attend the meeting. During the meeting, Liang Yanyan was introduced by the Global Fund Secretariat Civil Society Team to the CCM members in the EAP region. She introduced the delegation and the Board to them. After the meeting, Liang Yanyan published a over 10 pages report in both English and Chinese.

September 2007, Liang Yanyan opened an e-column on the Chinese HIV/AIDS Information Network (CHAIN), under the section of Civil Society. From then, Liang Yanyan regularly reported to her constituency about her work and published the latest information by the column and NGO email groups. She also translated much English information into Chinese to make Chinese constituency be informed about the Global Fund. Furthermore, the column is the first delegate column on CHAIN’s website.

November 2007, Liang Yanyan attended the 16th Board Meeting held in Kunming China. During this meeting, Liang Yanyan worked closely with her Developing Countries NGO Delegation colleagues, and finally many decision points favorable to civil society participation was made, including Dual Track Financing, Community Systems Strengthening and Gender Sensitive Approach. All the decision points have a positive influence on the Round 8 Call for Proposal. Liang Yanyan also attended the meeting between the NGO Committee and the Communities Committee to China CCM and there civil society delegations to the Global Fund Board, the meeting between China civil society and the Chair and Vice-chair of the Board, and helped with the communication between each other.

During the Board Meeting, Liang Yanyan worked within three civil society delegations and published a statement to encourage Chinese government to strengthen the participation of Chinese civil society.

She also discussed and shared information with the Portfolio Manager of China Global Fund grants Mr. Oren Ginzburg about the mplementation of China AIDS Round 6.

After the 16th Board Meeting, Liang Yanyan keep communicating with the Portfolio Manager Oren Ginzburg by emails to inquire the latest progress of the China AIDS Round 6. So far, the Call for Implementers notice has been published widely by all the SRs, although something still need to be improved, in my opinion, the overall implementation goes well.

February 2008, Liang Yanyan attended the joint meeting held in UK between the three civil society delegations, including the Communities Delegation, the Developing Countries NGO Delegation and the Developed Countries NGO Delegation. During the meeting, three delegations discussed fully together on hotspot issues and developed the joint short-term, midterm and long-term objectives on different issues. Several working teams was built up on key issues.

After the meeting, Liang Yanyan reported back to the constituency in both English and Chinese by NGO email groups and her column on the meeting achievements, and reported that she had attend two working groups, which is Round 8 and Medicine.

February 2008, Liang Yanyan nominated a list of NGOs working in the developing countries of Asia Pacific Region (including China) to the Global Fund Partnership Forum Steering Committee. The Global Fund Third Partnership Forum will be held in Dakar, Senegal from 8 to 10 December 2008. The main objective of the meeting is to gathering a broad range of stakeholders to discuss Global Fund performance and to make recommendations on its strategy and effectiveness. The final decision on invitation will be made by the Steering Committee and the Global Fund Secretariat.

March 2008, the Round 8 Call for Proposal was launched. Liang Yanyan publicized the news and related Global Fund new policies by NGO email groups and her column. Liang Yanyan also emailed to the Global Fund Secretariat to acknowledge their work on making the Chinese translation of the key documents available. Later, Liang Yanyan informed the Global Fund Secretariat with the technical problem on downloading Chinese documents in time. On March 20, Liang Yanyan attended the meeting of the AIDS Working Group to the China CCM, and nominated herself to attend the writing team as NGO representative, which is also her commitment to fulfill her duty as a member for Round 8 Working Group after the three delegation joint meeting held in February. Furthermore, Liang Yanyan translated the newsletter Action Alert published by Civil Society-led technical support mechanism Civil Society Action Team (CSAT), and published the translation widely to the Chinese constituency by NGO email
groups and her column to help them understand more on the Round 8 Application.

On April 10, Liang Yanyan attended the China Round 8 Writing Team meeting. During the meeting, Liang Yanyan was nominated the member for the Core Writing Team as a NGO representative. Until now, except for the week during Global Fund 17th Board Meeting, Liang Yanyan has attended all the meeting of the Core Writing Team, and assisted to record every steps of the team’s work. In the team meeting, based on her knowledge on the target population migtant workers, she advocated the proposal to include more activities on civil society capacity building and outreach. She also mentioned the potential conflict of interest between the potential PR and CCM Chair should be clarified in the Eligibility part of the proposal.

April 2008, Liang Yanyan attended the 17th Board Meeting. Working closely with the delegation members, the delegation input to make the decision that an extra Round 9 will be launched be approached. In her opinion, for the recipient countries, this is the most important decision points made by the 17th Board Meeting. Currently, the Global Fund Secretariat has prepared for the implementation of the decision point.

May 2008, Liang Yanyan will assist Global Fund Secretariat to distribute two Chinese brochures published by the Global Fund (Global Fund: Who we are, What we do and An Evolving Partnership: Global Fund and Civil Society in Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria) to 200-300 Chinese grassroots NGOs under the help of CHAIN, to raise the awareness of Chinese NGOs on the Global Fund. Now, the Customs declaration is undergoing, after that, the brochures will be distributed as quickly as possible.

May 2008, as the Asia Pacific Regional Focal Point of the delegation, Liang Yanyan is going to build up a regional consultative group. This is a voluntary and not a fulltime work. An email group is going to be built to regular consult the opinions of the consultative group members, and the latest information from Global Fund Board will be distributed to the group members.

May 2008, Liang Yanyan will attend the CCM workshop held by the Technical Support Facility (TSF), a technical support partner of the Global Fund, which is cosponsored by UNAIDS and IPPF. During the workshop, the TSF consultants and country partners in this region will discuss about the Global Fund.

During the first year, Liang Yanyan keeps the regular cooperation with the NGO Committee and the Communities Committee to China CCM, and share the important information from the Board in time with the two Committees. In the second year of her delegation term, she has the following goals:

Build up communication with the CCM members representing NGOs in the countries other than China in Asia Pacific Region.

Improve the effectiveness of consulting constituency before and after the Board meetings

Review the Round 8 application process, and work together with the technical support partners of the Global Fund to mobilize NGOs in Asia Pacific to participate into the Round 9 and Round 10 application.

Cooperate with UNAIDS China Office to prepare the implementation of RCC/GC, and advocate for the civil society participation into the process.