Alliance India's CHAHA project will be extending care and support services to at least 64,000 children living with and affected by HIV in India. It is to put programmes in place that will help to keep the children with their parents or extended families.

The project is a new five-year community and home-based care and support programme focused on how HIV impacts on children and women. Led by Alliance India as a principal recipient of Global Fund Round 6 funding, the CHAHA project will support the delivery of a comprehensive package of interventions in 40 districts in four states in India through eight sub-recipient organisations and with 59 implementing non-governmental organisation partners.

The project got underway recently when Catholic Relief Services (CRS) met with potential non-governmental organisation partners in Maharashtra. CRS is one of the sub-recipient organisations of the CHAHA project. It will implement the project alongside nine non-governmental organisations.

CRS organised the two-day induction meeting with partners to address the reasons why India needs a programme on orphans and vulnerable children and to share project details with them. Alliance India staff facilitated the workshop, which was attended by two representatives from each of the implementing non-governmental organisations plus CRS (national and state) and the State AIDS Control Society (SACS).

The workshop looked at project approaches, key activities, the monitoring and evaluation framework, targets, unit costing, budgeting and project management. It also offered an opportunity to revisit the individual workplans and budgets of the implementing organisations. SACS will be updated periodically on the progress of the project and will support the co-ordination of project activities.