From April 18 to 28, the Director of the ” Eastern European Regional Platform for Accelerated Action for Women, Girls and Transgender in HIV/AIDS Context” project funded by RCNF conducted a field visit to Russia and Moldova based project partner organizations: Non-Profit Partnership “ESVERO” and Public Association “Union for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Harm Reduction in Moldova (UORN)” respectively.

The non-profit partnership to support public health social prevention programmes ESVERO (NP ESVERO) is a non-governmental organization uniting 39 legal entities and individuals from different regions of the Russian Federation involved in delivery of social prevention services to people using drugs and people living with HIV/AIDS. The main direction of our activity is developing integrated low-threshold services for drug users and other vulnerable groups aimed at prevention of HIV, viral Hepatitis and other harmful diseases, providing access to high-quality drug treatment services, HIV treatment, rehabilitation and resocialization.

UORN has over 10 years of experience of public healthcare programs coordination in Moldova. The association is based in Balti Municipality and has a mission to consolidate and coordinate of all the Union member organizations activity, for the developing and promoting of Harm Reduction strategies as an effective Public Health Care in Moldova.

The goals of the visits to the Russian and Moldavian partner organization were four – fold:

1. To get know about the partner organization Board, Staff, structure and key areas of the strategic programs.

2. To raise the RCNF funded project information and visibility both among the ESVERO / UORN membership and civil society/ community in Russia.

3. To conduct an internal assessment of the gender components, gender based approach and gender equality in ESVERO / UORN decision making bodies, programming, implementation, monitoring and evaluation systems.

4. To develop a set of recommendations to sharpen gender equality within decision making procedures and to improve gender based approach in ESVERO / UORN strategic development.

ESVERO and UORN strategy and programs assessment was conducted using a Gender Assessment Tool elaborated to get information on the organization 4 aspects: capacity, culture, accountability and political will. Representatives of the Board, Staff (top management, administrative, technical and supporting) participated in the assessment to ensure the holistic results of the outcomes. Based on the average scores, the set of recommendations was developed for all the 4 aspects and together with ESVERO and UORN management agreed time and responsibilities for the implementation if the recommendations. The Project National Coordinator Ms. E. Romanyak said “The idea to conduct a comprehensive assessment on our organization capacities and skillswas very timely and the outcome will help us to integrate gender based approaches in all steps of our organization undertakings starting from planning and ending by a follow-up planning”.

In framework of the visit to Russia, the project director and project national coordinator visited 2 organization providing services for girls and woman- E.V.A and working with TG – “Transgender” Foundation. These visits had an initiative to boost a cooperation between ESVERO and E.V.A. / “Transgender” Foundation as an community based organizations, as well as to get general overview about the situation of the girls, woman and TG in Russia in terms of the access to the HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programs and public healthcare in general.

In Moldova, the team visited one of the partner organization based in Chisinau and providing services for girls and woman- Mothers for Life. The visit had an initiative to boost a cooperation between UORN and MfL as an community based organization, as well as to get general overview about the situation of the girls, woman and TG in Moldova in terms of the access to the HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programs and public healthcare in general. During the visit round-up, the UORN Board member and the Director of Falesti District Hospital of the MoH of Moldova, Mr. I. Osoianu said: “The project initiative to tackle the gender equality issues into HIV/AIDS programs will help our organization to become one of the leading advocates in overcoming existing barriers in achieving the goal90/90/90 in Moldova”.

The project team met also with the representatives of WHO office in Moldova and agreed to get a legal copyright for the translation and using of the WHO document “Transgender Policy Brief” into Romanian language. WHO office agreed also to print the document in several copies for our project partners which is good start of the collaboration between the project and UN agencies.