The USAID Program for Strengthening the Central America Response to HIV/AIDS (USAID/PASCA) implements specific country activities in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama, as well as regional activities that cover all of Central America, including Honduras. The focus of the project is policy and systems strengthening activities that are pillars of the Partnership Framework in the region and keys principals of GHI.USAID/PASCA supports responses to HIV in the following strategic areas: a) planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating national HIV strategic plans; b) advocacy and political dialog to strengthen the response to HIV, and c) business sectors involvement in the response to HIV, including workplace policies.USAID/PASCAs main activities are to provide technical assistance and training to: strengthen and evaluate information systems to respond to HIV; analyze policies, develop studies on HIV policies, and implement policies; improve institutional capabilities of governmental, non-governmental, and business-sector organizations in strategic planning, resource management, and network and alliance development; strengthen organizational capacity of MARPs NGOs; develop policy level dialogue related to sexual and gender-based violence that ensures the participation of multi-sectorial representatives in the design, implementation and monitoring of SGBV activities.Sustainability: The USAID/PASCA project provides technical assistance to MOHs, civil society and the private sector to build the skills they need to be leaders in their programs or advocate for their own rights. The policy field will be assessed in FY 2012 in order to determine if there is still need in these areas of work or if the programs are sustainable.

Global Fund / Programmatic Engagement Questions

1. Is the Prime Partner of this mechanism also a Global Fund principal or sub-recipient, and/or does this mechanism support Global Fund grant implementation? Yes2. Is this partner also a Global Fund principal or sub-recipient? Neither3. What activities does this partner undertake to support global fund implementation or governance?

Budget Code Recipient(s) of Support Approximate Budget Brief Description of ActivitiesHVSI CCMs in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua & Panama and Regional Coordinating Mechanism 997887 Technical assistance to determinate the technical content of new proposals, to improve financial and programmatic implementation of ongoing projects and provides training to strengthen overall implementation capacities.

USAID/PASCA actions will be aimed at establishing the conditions needed to provide increased visibility, efficiency, sustainability, and feasibility to the monitoring and evaluation of the national response. The project will provide technical assistance and training to national actors, so that they develop plans and timelines to implement M&E Plans, which, at a minimum, will include: a) identifying those in charge of information flows and focal points for reports; identifying indicators that require continuous reporting; b) identifying funding sources for specific studies that are required; c) preparing plans for analyses, and d) developing information-dissemination mechanisms. The plans will also foster prioritizing and planning the time required to gather information for indicators, in order to perform periodic and systematic measurements and to identify those that need to be introduced progressively, due to technical or financial reasons. USAID/PASCA will update indicator-prioritization exercises to have them explicitly reflect impact and process indicators; have them be consistent with the epidemiological scenario, the national strategy, and international commitments including UNGASS indicators and USG Partnership Framework, and to obtain them routinely and periodically from the national HIV information systems. For M&E Plans to be feasible, information sub-systems must also be strengthened; temporary support must be provided, in order to standardize and update data collection instruments and databases, and platforms to link the various sub-systems must be updated or built in order to harmonize HIV-information sub-systems, with the aim of developing a sole national information system to generate periodic national reports. The project will coordinate its efforts with National Monitoring and Evaluation Committees, so that they become the main actors in this process, in order to strengthen the effective leadership of this group to conduct M&E actions at the national level. USAID/PASCA will also develop training workshops on techniques to collect, manage, analyze, and use data at three different levels (basic, intermediate, and specialized).

USAID/PASCA will provide technical assistance to help partners identify implementation barriers, build a common base of knowledge about these, and prepare a corrective action plan to successfully remove the institutional, legal and normative barriers that impede evidence-based prevention and care at the regional and country level. The barriers to be addressed are related with health delivery services, human resources for health, strategic information, health finance and governance / leadership. The project will strengthen the skills of country-level stakeholders to undertake policy analysis, with a particular emphasis on operational policies and implementation barriers analysis. It will provide technical assistance to develop a baseline to identify, document and categorize current barriers. USAID/PASCA will use information from the AIDS Policy Index, policy implementation, stigma and discrimination studies, to analyze information about barriers in the legal, political, normative and operational policy arena and the current interventions to address them. Once complete, the team will assist partners to carry out a series of activities in each country (workshops, meetings, training, working groups, and dissemination of materials) designed to generate a common base of knowledge and provide a mechanism to identify key actors involved in the response, prioritize barriers to address in the short and medium term, build consensus about possible corrective actions, and establish goals and timelines. The results of the implementation analysis and consultative process will form the basis of action plans for institutions involved in prevention and treatment of HIV. Examples of possible corrective actions include protocols/algorithms, strategies, and policy and process changes.USAID/PASCA works with groups representing Most At Risk Population (MARPs), specifically with Men who have Sex with Men, Transgender (Trans), commercial sex workers, People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and mobile populations, to ensure their participation in the different decision-making spheres and support their inclusion in prevention, planning, and monitoring activities, as well in service delivery projects. Efforts also will be made to work with networks to address positive prevention. PASCA assistance to MARPs groups and NGOs will focus on formalizing their legal status and strengthening their organizational capacity and development. Activities will include technical assistance to strengthen their ability to participate effectively in HIV policy processes, with workshops on topics such as strategic planning, strategic information, financial and administrative management of organizations, policy advocacy, and technical information on HIV prevention and the legal framework. To increase the political and social capital of MARPs groups, the project team will establish mechanisms at the national level for networking and communication among groups and networks, conducting a series of workshops on network formation, leadership and conflict resolution. Using a limited small grant program, the project will promote institutional strengthening of MARPs groups and organizations, providing seed funds to establish alliances with service delivery organizations; carry out advocacy, prevention, citizen monitoring, network strengthening or peer prevention activities; or train health service providers and mental health services in non-stigmatizing service delivery.