To better highlight French-speaking stakeholders
involved in the fight against pandemics
For French-speaking stakeholders, access to information in the global health sector is limited. The reason? The predominance of English-speaking actors in the fight against pandemics. For L’Initiative, supporting French-speaking stakeholders and facilitating access to quality information is crucial to fighting pandemics efficiently.
Training peer educators or community health workers means including the most exposed groups, also known as “key populations”, in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
It is essential to promote the influence of French-speaking stakeholders engaged in the fight against pandemics and to help them highlight their models and projects on the world stage. To achieve this, providing access to information and resources relative to the subject of health is vital. Therefore L’Initiative contributes to balancing the Global Fund’s strategic priorities by strengthening French-speaking stakeholders’ capacities, with an emphasis on African countries.
Creating the conditions to increase French-speaking stakeholders’ influence
Thanks to its experience and the support it receives, civil society can acquire skills and legitimacy. With its increasingly educated members, the community can organize on a regional scale. In this context, linguistic proximity encourages concerted action, the creation of synergies, and the fast circulation of information. That is why, it is crucial for L’Initiative, along with French-speaking countries among 40 countries of intervention, to take advantage of the linguistic factor, for it enables the spreading of knowledge, the creation of synergies, and regional responses, therefore contributing to French-speaking Africa’s catching up in matters pandemic response.
Encouraging networking among civil society
In the fight against pandemics, strategies and practices among stakeholders on the field often proved more context-relevant regarding the most vulnerable populations’ screening and treatment. That is why L’Initiative is working toward the consolidation of civil society and community organizations.
Organizations supported by L’Initiative often have as their objective to reinforce the capacities of civil society and the spreading of information. This can be achieved through the training of community stakeholders in science writing. The objective? To implement a knowledge-sharing culture, reaching out to spread acquired information and good practices developed by the community. The nonprofit REVS+ has initiated such a culture with the Riposte project in Burkina Faso, which REVS+ is deploying in three other countries with the help of its local counterparts: in Burundi with the ANSS, in Mali with ARCAD Santé +, and in Mauritius with the NGO PILS.
67%
project leaders supported by L’Initiative since 2011 are civil society actors
By funding their projects, mobilizing their expertise, and linking them, L’Initiative creates a connection between France and many French and French-speaking stakeholders involved in the sector of global health. It represents an indirect opportunity to create, rally, and retain a French-speaking network around issues of world health, far beyond the Global Fund’s multilateral stakes.
STÉPHANIE TCHIOMBIANO
Coordinator of the think tank Santé Mondiale 2030, former coordinator of L’Initiative from 2012 to 2015
Carry the voice of French-speaking stakeholders to the Global Fund
The will to facilitate the structuring of information and the involvement of French-speaking stakeholders also requires an influence within the Global Fund. L’Initiative brings valuable support to the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs in terms of steering the Global Fund: thanks to feedback from the field generated by its partners, experts, and beneficiaries, L’Initiative can foster France’s strategic positions on the Global Fund’s board.