The Danish NCD Alliance began as a programme organization with CISU at the turn of the year

22-01-2020
The Danish NCD Alliance has been approved as a programme organization with CISU and has thereby obtained a four year progranne grant through Danida's Civil Society Fund

WHO/Patricia Goldschmid - Young woman at a screening with Uganda NCD Alliance

The Danish NCD Alliance has been approved as a programme organization

It is with great pride that it now can be announced that the Danish NCD Alliance has become a programme organization with CISU. It has taken a great amount of time and hard work to reach this point. We have since 2009 had more than 20 individual projects with CISU and started the process towards becoming a programme organization back in 2018. Therefore, it was incredible when we finally could inform our partners in East Africa about the final approval of our application from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The programme title is: “Making Non Communicable Diseases Prevention and Control a Development Priority in East Africa”. The programme’s duration is four years and has a yearly budget of approximately 3,500,000 DKK which amounts to 14,258,00 in total.

 

What does it mean to be a programme organization?

Roughly, it means that we no longer have to apply for singular grants, which usually have a relatively short duration (usually 6-18 months), but instead get one pooled grant which we, together with our partners, can distribute to the partner countries. We have been approved because we live up to a list of formal requirements. Basically, it means that our donor now fully believe that we have the fundamental organizational and economic competencies put in place. As a programme organization, we have the opportunity to work with a longer strategic focus which will improve our opportunities to create synergies across our partners.

 

Overall, we will not get more funding but the available funds will be more flexible. Furthermore, we do also believe that the overall administrative burden for the secretariat will be a bit lighter even though we of course still have to report thoroughly on how the funds are being spend and not least which changes the funds contributes to.

 

The programme’s primary aims and activities

The overall programme objective is to by 2030, reduce by one-third premature mortality from NCDs through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being (UN sustainable development goal 3.4).

 

The programme is built upon five strategic interventions:

-          Evidence-based advocacy at national level

-          Advocacy for prioritization of NCDs at the East African Community

-          Mobilization and organization of People Living with NCDs

-          Development and maintenance of good governance and resource mobilization
           at partnerlevel

-          Improved NCD data collection in collaboration with research institutions

 

We are very grateful for the trust CISU has shown us. Together with our partners we look forward to continuing the fight for the strengthening of primary health care, better inclusion of NCD patients in the decision-making process and not least the prevention of the primary NCD risk factors in East Africa – just to mention a few of the main priorities.