About

GFAN UNITES VOICES AND EFFORTS

to support a fully funded global fund

WHO WE ARE

The Global Fund Advocates Network (GFAN) was established in 2011 to unite voices and efforts from all over the world to support a fully funded Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

GFAN builds on and brings together existing structures, expertise and experience that has been developed and gathered since 2002 in support of the Global Fund, working with advocates, activists, and affected communities in the South and the North, as well as Friends of the Fund organizations.

The overall purpose of GFAN is to build a global social movement to demand health for all by recruiting, connecting, and mobilizing advocates to communicate the urgent need and demand full funding for the Global Fund to maximize its impact.

Year Founded

2011

YEAR FOUNDED

Individual Members

975*

INDIVIDUAL
MEMBERS

Number of Organisations

650*

NUMBER OF 
ORGANIZATIONS

Countries Represented

105*

NUMBER OF COUNTRIES
REPRESENTED

* data as of January 1 2023

To achieve this goal, GFAN’s objectives are to:

1. Support Advocacy and Resource Mobilization
To empower and support GFAN members in developing and implementing advocacy strategies (including working with media) on global health and resource mobilization for the Global Fund.

2. Support Action
To initiate and support powerful action of GFAN members at global, regional and national level.

3. Build the movement
To facilitate and expand the membership network that constitutes the global social movement in support of the Global Fund, with increased participation from advocates and affected communities in implementing countries, current donor countries and potential new donor countries.

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Join Us

GFAN welcomes as its members all civil society organizations, Friends of the Fund groups and individuals that endorse GFAN's goals, objectives and principles.

Our mailing list is used for information-sharing and joint strategizing on the Global Fund. You will be invited to regular conference calls with colleagues around the world and be able to take part in our campaigns and to use the tools we provide for your own advocacy work.

We encourage you to be active members and to share your Global Fund-related information and campaigns, to use our list to proactively connect with other organizations and advocates who are dedicated to a fully funded and effective Global Fund, to promote our campaign tools and to take part in GFAN calls.

Are you interested in becoming a GFAN member? Learn more about us and our work in our membership guide first. You can send a join request here.

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Secretariat

The GFAN Secretariat has 4 staff persons:  Katy Kydd Wright, Quentin Batreau, Eyerusalem Belay & Priyanka Aiyer. The GFAN Secretariat can be reached by emailing gfan@globalfundadvocatesnetwork.org. It is advised by a 11-member Steering Committee.  GFAN is hosted by the Joep Lange Institute.

Katy Kydd Wright

Katy Kydd WrightKaty is the Director of the Global Fund Advocates Network. Based in Ottawa, Canada, Katy spent close to a decade working for Canadian Parliamentarians in various roles at the House of Commons.  During her time working for Parliamentarians her policy areas were as divergent as automotive policy, telecommunications regulations and human rights, but it was her work on patent regulations and the first Canadian Access to Medicines Regime adopted in 2004 that brought her into the field of global health.

Katy left Canadian politics and joined RESULTS Canada where she managed the grassroots-based organizations work on tuberculosis control with the ACTION partnership. Later, as Director of Campaigns, she led efforts on all the global health and poverty related campaigns of the organization including vaccines, microcredit and Education for All.

Katy has presented at Canadian and international conferences, trained grassroots volunteers to advocate to their elected officials, lobbied organizations like the World Bank, IMF and Global Fund and run numerous campaigns to increase funding to global health issues, TB in particular.

Since joining the GFAN team in September of 2012, Katy has coordinated the Global Fund Advocates Network established to unite voices and efforts from all over the world to support a fully funded and effective Global Fund.

Katy has a degree in Political and Comparative Development Studies from Trent University.

Katy can be reached at Katy@globalfundadvocatesnetwork.org

Quentin Batreau

Quentin BatreauQuentin is our Research and Advocacy lead. He joined GFAN in 2021 after working for APCASO, a regional health advocacy network based in Bangkok and GFAN partner. He trained as a researcher, teaching sociology and political science at the Social Policy and Development program at Thammasat University, and defended his PhD thesis on refugee management in 2020 with Sciences Po. He also holds a master in Urban Studies from Sciences Po, and a double bachelor in Political Science and Mathematics from Sciences Po and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

He has spent the last 10 years between Thailand, France and India, until moving to Fiji in 2019.

He can be reached at: quentin@globalfundadvocatesnetwork.org

Eyerusalem Belay

Eyerusalem is a Grants, MLE and Operations Officer for GFAN based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  She is a lawyer, researcher, and project management professional with diverse experience developing and managing civic engagement and legal programs for civil society organizations.

Over the past five years, she has worked for the Civil Society Resource Center (CSRC), Center for the Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD), Danish Refugee Council and the Addis Ababa University Center for Human Rights.

Eyerusalem is a 2022 Mandela Washington Young African Leader Fellow and 2020 Werdewet Research fellow and a co-founder of a research and civic collaboration space in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Eyerusalem has a bachelor of law degree (LLB) and a master of law degree in International Human Rights Law (LLM) from the Addis Ababa University School of Law.

She can be reached at eyerusalem@globalfundadvocatesnetwork.org

Priyanka Aiyer

Priyanka is the Communications and Advocacy Officer for GFAN based in Delhi, India. Priyanka is a Development Communication Specialist. With nine years in the field she has expertise in designing communication solutions for social impact, creating and implementing advocacy campaigns, and training communities and health advocates. Until recently, she was working as the Communications Lead for the #2023TBHLM Affected Communities and Civil Society Coordination Hub, hosted by GFAN.

Priyanka has a bachelor degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Delhi University and a masters degree is Film Studies from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University.

She can be reached at Priyanka@globalfundadvocatesnetwork.org. 

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About the Global Fund

The Global Fund is a unique public-private partnership and international financing institution dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS, TB, and malaria in more than 140 countries.

The Global Fund is a financing institution and does not implement programmes. Instead, funds are disbursed to governments, international agencies, NGOs, and private sector entities that take on programmatic and financial responsibility for the grants. Countries implementing these grants are also required to provide co-financing (called counterpart financing) to their national disease programmes. 

The Global Fund is financed through cycles in order to identify and obtain predictable, long-term and sustainable financial support; countries, private foundations, corporations and faith-based organizations pledge funding at a replenishment conference hosted every 3 years. 

Visit the Global Fund website for more information.

Why is the Global Fund so important?

The Global Fund is the main financier of international efforts against all 3 diseases and has developed a strategy building on scientific insights that allow us to see for the first time how we can fundamentally change the course of the epidemics. As of mid-2014, the Fund had provided HIV treatment for 6.6 million people, had helped detect and treat 11.9 million cases of TB and had distributed 410 million bed nets to protect people, most often children under 5, most at risk from malaria.

Enormous but extremely fragile progress has been made at exactly the time as donors have been scaling back or failing to meet their commitments. This forced the Global Fund to halt funding for new grants in 2011 for almost a year and a half.

Aside from funds pledged at the replenishment conferences, significant resource mobilization is still necessary for demand that the Fund cannot fund and for domestic resource mobilization in the fight against the 3 diseases.

It is the fragility of the Fund’s success that makes it critical for advocacy voices to strategize collaboratively, identify common platforms to share information and to generally coordinate work to ensure cohesive, effective advocacy.

The Global Fund and Civil Society

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a multi-stakeholder partnership that fully involves civil society at national and international levels in programme implementation as well as in governance. The Global Fund presents an innovative model that provides civil society with the opportunity to develop and advocate for a comprehensive civil society agenda in the fight against the three diseases.

The Global Fund Board has three seats assigned to civil society. The delegations to the Board include: the Communities of people living with HIV, TB, and affected by malaria; the Developing Country NGOs; and the Developed Country NGOs. Other Board seats are assigned to groups of donor countries, groups of implementing countries, as well as one seat to private foundations and one seat to the private sector.

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GFAN Regional Partners

In 2014, two Regional Partners (previously known as hubs) were launched: GFAN Africa and GFAN Asia-Pacific.

The two platforms operate independently and were established to provide additional space for regional voices and organizing around the Global Fund and fighting AIDs, TB and malaria. 

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Steering Committee

  • Chris Collins
    Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
  • Kanna (Revanta) Dharmarajah

    Frontline AIDS (co-chair)

  • RD Marte

    APCASO

  • Cecilia Senoo

    GFAN Africa (co-chair)

  • Nerima Were Kenyan

    Legal & Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN)

  • Peter Wiessner

    Action Against AIDS Germany

  • Solange Baptiste

    (International Treatment Preparedness Coalition – ITPC)

  • Joanne Carter

    (Results)

  • Palesa Chetane/Mathato Aumane

    Partners in Health

  • Mike Podmore

    STOPAIDS

  • Rachel Ong

    GFAN Asia-Pacific

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