During the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) and Tides Foundation Collaborative Fund for International Treatment Preparedness Global Advisory Board Meeting on February 15, 2005, there was an extended discussion about the role of the International Steering Group (ISG) of the ITPC and its role as the Global Advisory Board of the Collaborative Fund (CF).

As the ITPC is the programmatic partner in the CF, while the Tides Foundation’s partnership role is to provide fiscal and grants management for the program, the ITPC ISG should provide oversight and guidance to the CF and act as the Global Advisory Board (GAB) for the CF.

Until recently, the ITPC has worked in an ad-hoc manner, with no overall coordination and no regional structures of decision-making or accountability. In order to enhance its own effectiveness, the ITPC has set up an ISG and Regional Advisory Committee (RACs) to provide both global-level and regional coordination of its activities. These structures are new and still under formation.. Furthermore, the work of the ITPC is all carried out by volunteers, and the network has no paid coordinator, and the work of the coalition is a small piece of many, busy activists around the globe.

The ITPC sees the CF as a key vehicle for supporting local and regional treatment advocacy and literacy efforts.. This function of the CF grew out of the discussions at the first International Treatment Preparedness Summit in March 2003 in Cape Town, South Africa, that gave birth to the ITPC. However, the ITPC also expects the CF to support the broader social movement to promote universal access to treatment for all people living with HIV/AIDS and expects the CF to take guidance from the IPTC in this regard. The CF needs to be driven by the needs of the movement, not the needs of the Tides Foundation or the donors to the CF. This means key decisions about the CF need to be made in conjunction with the ISG, not by Tides staff alone. In turn, the ISG will take its own guidance from the larger ITPC membership and the RACs.

The CF has already set up or is in the process of establishing technical review committees for grant making in each of the regions called Community Review Panels (CRPs), to highlight the community-driven nature of the CF’s work. These CRPs have been established as part of the process to prepare for grant making and the membership in these panels have been derived from individuals involved in the workshops that have preceded the regional grant making processes, from the planning groups that coordinated the workshops, and from various regional networks. They have no formal relationship with ITPC and the Tides Foundation and its own staff and regional coordinators hired by the Foundation support the work of the CRPs.

The ITPC ISG wants to rationalize the relationship between the burgeoning structure of the ITPC and the structures that have been set in place for the CF in order to ensure that the CF is integrated into the larger work of the treatment access movement and does not work in isolation from the broader political and programmatic goals of the ITPC. Achieving greater clarity of roles and responsibilities of the ITPC ISG, Tides Foundation, the RACs and the CRPs, will also make the work of the CF easier and more efficient.

The ISG of the ITPC will function as the GAB of the CF. It will work in an advisory capacity to Tides Foundation and the CF, as the ITPC has no formal authority over the activities of the Foundation.. However, on matters of overall policies and procedures of the CF, the ISG/GAB expects Tides Foundation to heed the advice of its programmatic partner. The Tides Foundation can represent the views and needs of the donors to the CF, but should see ITPC as representing the views and needs of treatment activists and PWLHAs in the context of this partnership.

Therefore, the ISG seeks to advise the Tides Foundation on the following issues:

• Breakdown of funding between regions;
• Trans-regional funding priorities (e.g. women and girls, IDUs);
• Guidelines for fundraising (e.g. what private and/or public sector funders will be approached and what ones will not, for example, USAID, pharmaceutical industry);
• Fundraising strategies (i.e. which institutions to approach and when);
• Parameters for expanding the mission of the CF, its range of partners for grant making or technical assistance, or the number of funding regions;
• Core values to be communicated to CRPs and grantees;
• Policies on conflict-of-interest in grant review;
• Monitoring and evaluation indicators;

The ISG agrees to provide assistance to the Tides Foundation in the following areas:

• Resolving regional challenges in the grant making process (e.g. where one region is behind deadlines for grant making or over budget for grantee meetings);
• Disseminating information on the CF;
• Securing additional funding for the CF;
• Identifying international technical assistance partners;

The ISG will nominate two individuals, one from the global South and one from the global North to act as official liaisons to the Tides Foundation for CF activities in order to facilitate communication between ITPC and the Foundation.

In addition, the ISG would like to establish monthly conference calls with the Tides Foundation to discuss CF activities and plans.

The ISG would like to see the CRPs function as sub-committees of the ITPC’s RACs in order to establish a level of political responsibility and oversight for the CF’s work in each of the regions. Otherwise, the CRPs are stand-alone committees that have no link with the broader treatment access movement. That being said, the RACs are not yet established or sufficiently functional in each region to allow this to happen immediately, but we hope the Tides Foundation will promote this vision with the existing CRPs..

The ISG would like to propose using some of the regional networking support in the CF budget to upgrade the ITPC list and allow for translation of key information into Russian, French and Spanish. We would also like to explore using the regional coordinators for the CF to give support to the RACs as well as the CRPs, since both bodies often overlap in membership and mission.

Both these proposals would require additional discussion between the ITPC ISG and the Tides Foundation.