Networks for young people living with HIV announced the HIV Young Leaders Fund: a new partnership effort between youth networks and donors. The HIV Young Leaders Fund is an innovative funding mechanism driven by a broad range of organizations, including international and country-level youth-led networks. The mission of the HIV Young Leaders Fund is to enable and develop new leadership in the AIDS response among young people most-affected by HIV.

“Peer-based programming is highly effective yet chronically underfunded and youth-led programs often lack support for core resources,” said Liping Mian, World AIDS Campaign Youth Campaign Coordinator and HIV Young Leaders Fund Interim Steering Committee member.

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Young people account for close to 45 percent of new HIV infections. The Fund aims to ensure that young people living with HIV and most-at-risk young people set funding priorities for their own communities. “The HIV Young Leaders Fund is responding to the needs of marginalized youth at the country level who are affected by HIV and AIDS but have limited or no resources to make a change,” said Anna-Kaye Rowe, Coordinator of Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network and also a Fund Interim Steering Committee member.

The HIV Young Leaders Fund will make small grants to youth-led initiatives primarily at the local level. Priority will be given to projects that address the needs of young people living with HIV and most-at-risk young people in the community. The Fund will support:

Grant applications will be released in March 2010, and the Fund will announce its first round of grantees in July 2010 at the Vienna International AIDS Conference. An Interim Steering Committee will serve as the governing body for the HIV Young Leaders Fund in 2010. The following organizations sit on this governing body: Global Network of Sex Work Projects, Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS, GNP+’s Interim Reference Group on Young People Living with HIV, International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, World AIDS Campaign, Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Y-PEER, Young Positives, Youth R.I.S.E, and the country networks IPPF+ Nepal and Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network.

The HIV Young Leaders Fund is hosted by the HIV Collaborative Fund, a project of the Tides Network. The Collaborative Fund is a community-driven grants-making mechanism that has disbursed over $15,000,000 to community mobilization projects globally since its inception in 2004. The Interim Steering Committee has hired an Interim Young Leaders Fund Coordinator for early 2010. A hiring process for the permanent position will commence in April 2010.