TWO new civil society members have been chosen to sit on the committee of the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) which manages programmes of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Renuka Anandjit, Programme Director of the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association (GRPA) and Travis Spellin, Finance Manager of Comforting Hearts were successfully elected as representative and alternate respectively for the CCM seats allocated to the civil society constituency.

Anandjit and Spellin were nominated by the Guyana Equality Forum (GEF), which is a network of local civil society organisations working for equality and human rights in Guyana. The GEF was founded by the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) in May 2011 and is currently chaired by Red Thread, while SASOD serves as the secretariat for the network.

The mandate of the CCM is to coordinate the preparation and approve proposals for submission to the Global Fund and to monitor the implementation of all approved grants. The CCM focuses on performance by linking Global Fund resources to the achievement of clear, measurable and sustainable results based upon agreed monitoring indicators.

Membership in the CCM is broadly representative of a variety of stakeholders, each representing an active constituency with an interest in one or more of the funded disease areas – HIV, TB and Malaria.

“The participation of communities, particularly those infected and directly affected by the three diseases, is critical for both the development of proposals and the implementation of the awarded grant funds,” the GEF stated in a press release.

The GEF quoted Anandjit as saying she was grateful for the opportunity to serve the NGO (Non-Government Organisations) community and Guyana on a whole.

“I look forward to working with the wider NGO community, to engage and represent on the issues with partners and stakeholders,” she noted.

Spellin said he intends to use this opportunity as a member of the CCM to advocate on behalf of persons affected and infected by HIV, especially key populations.

“I am prepared also to bring knowledge to the decision-making forum of the CCM for policy development, which would be in line with the goals and objectives of Global Fund, and at the same time, address the unmet needs of civil society organisations’ clientele,” he stated.

Ms. Anandjit succeeds the late Ms. Zenita Temall Nicholson, who committed suicide in October 2015. Nicholson was elected to the seat in early 2015 for a two-year term, but her passing created a vacant seat, which required fresh elections. The elected representatives will hold these posts until the current term of the CCM ends in early 2017.