Asia and the Pacific, like many other regions across the world, continues to witness an unprecedented health emergency with the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
We listened to our partner organisations through our COVID-19 rapid needs assessment, where they expressed concerns about continuing to work for their communities, caring for their health and safety, whilst managing the financial and emotional strain of the coronavirus disease on their organisations and their own well-being.
In response, APTN has provided grants to community groups and trans human rights defenders across Asia and the Pacific that have stepped up to provide support to the trans and gender diverse communities that they serve in the form of the APTN COVID-19 Community Support Fund.
The Community Support Fund aims to fill gaps by equipping groups that are severely impacted by COVID-19 to respond to needs they have identified on the ground. It was offered to all past and current APTN project partners to help meet community realities and sustain their organisations’ operations and functions.
To apply, project partners submitted proposals containing detailed information about their target beneficiaries as well as budgets for each component of the proposal. These funds will be used, amongst other things, to support community members with essential supplies such as food rations or personal protective equipment (PPE), or to sustain their organisations.
As of 10th June 2020, almost $70,000 USD has been distributed to 21 community groups across 13 countries.
The pandemic is a powerful reminder of the world’s inequalities, and how we are only as strong as our weakest health systems. There is a lot more work that needs to be done, and greater financial investments and support are needed to address the structural and systematic barriers trans and gender diverse people face.
We call for greater support from funders, donors, and other organisations to take into consideration the realities of communities on the ground and reprogramme and allocate resources to where it is most needed at this time.
Below are the project partners supported under the grant that have provided consent for their information to be listed (in alphabetical order).
| PACIFIC | SOUTH ASIA | SOUTH EAST ASIA |
| Haus of Khameleon (Fiji) HETURA NCD LGBT Group (Papua New Guinea) MY GIRLS CLUB (Samoa) Pacific Sexual and Gender Diversity Network (Samoa) Tonga Leitis Association (Tonga) | Basera Samajik Sansthan (India) Blue Diamond Society, Kathmandu, Nepal (Nepal) Have Only Positive Expectations – HOPE (Pakistan) Samabhabona (India) Unity For Change (U4C) (Nepal) Venasa Transgender Network (Sri Lanka) Wajood (Pakistan) | IT’S T TIME (Vietnam) Jaringan Transgender Indonesia (JTID) (Indonesia) LakanBini Advocates Pilipinas (Philippines) Pertubuhan Pembangunan Kebajikan dan Persekitaran Positif Malaysia (SEED) (Malaysia) SISTERs Foundation (Thailand) The Foundation of Transgender Alliance for Human Rights (Thailand) Yayasan Srikandi Sejati (Indonesia) |
If you are a trans or gender diverse person in any of the countries the organisations are operating in, please consider reaching out to these organisations for support.
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