Duga Archives - Drug Policy Network SEE

Duga raises awareness about importance of testing and early discovery of HIV infection

Posted on 12/06/202312/06/2023 by Milutin

Community-based and community-led testing services are crucial in the HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections response, particularly in reaching populations where diagnosis and linkage to care are lower than the national average. However, providing these services can be challenging, especially in environments that may be hostile towards community-based and -led service delivery, and where policy and legal barriers exist.

In 2022-2023, the COBATEST Network supported six member organizations in countries where the environment is particularly challenging for community-based and community-led service delivery. In the interview with Asocijacija DUGA, one of the 6 organisation supported, they asked the organisation to tell about their work, the challenges they face, and how they are working to improve community-based testing services for HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections in their communities.

Replying to the question about the role that CBVCT plays in reaching this community in Serbia, they said:

Community-based and community-led testing (CBVCT) centers have a crucial role in reaching of GBTMSM population in Serbia. This is mainly due to the fact that the population is still significantly stigmatized and discriminated. This is also noticeable within the system of public health institutions. The most of the VCCT centers exist only in bigger cities, and even not all of them have sufficiently sensitized staff in order to properly approach and address the needs of the community. Therefore, majority of the target population rather chooses CBVCT as a place they would like to get the information, counseling and testing services.

Nowadays, as we are faced with the greater influx of the clients coming from the migrant population, CBVCT approach becomes even more important. No matter if they come from migrant, refugee or asylum seeker community, and belong to the GBTMSM population (which make significant share), they usually find information through the community based organizations and their social networks, as they are more accessible, so we are usually the first they approach to ask for services. Many of migrants belong to the population of PLHIV, and we were able to ensure they get linkage to care as well as to regulate their health insurance status, in order to continue using therapy in Serbia, which would be very difficult to achieve without support of CBVCT organizations.

You can read this interesting interview following this link>>>.

Visit to the Duga Checkpoint centre

Posted on 22/02/202330/05/2023 by Milutin

Representatives of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Ms Fariba Soltani, Chief, HIV/AIDS Section and Global Coordinator for HIV/AIDS, Ms. Gorica Popović, Specialist, Law Enforcement and HIV and Ms Žana Glavendekić, the Regional Project Officer for Drug Demand Reduction visited the Duga Checkpoint centre in Belgrade and met with community-led organizations working on HIV and harm reduction services for key populations.

It was an opportunity to share about services which Prevent, TOC, Duga and ReGeneration provide and to discuss operational issues related to implementation of the UNODC-led project “Emergency support for the provision of HIV and Harm Reduction services among key populations in Ukraine and refugees in selected neighbouring countries”.

Project coordination meeting

Posted on 18/01/202319/01/2023 by Milutin

Partners in the “Emergency support for the provision of HIV and Harm Reduction services among key populations in Ukraine and refugees in selected neighbouring countries” project held a coordination meeting with the representative of the UNODC Regional Programme Office for Eastern Europe which supports the project. It was an opportunity to present information of the activities implemented since the start of the project in mid-December and additionally clarify some issues related to reporting.

Project partners meeting

Posted on 28/12/202212/01/2023 by Milutin

Representatives of the partners in the “Emergency support for the provision of HIV and Harm Reduction services among key populations in Ukraine and refugees in selected neighbouring countries” project met today to discuss about services to be provided to key population refugees and reporting from the project.

Duga active both locally and wider

Posted on 15/04/202019/04/2020 by Milutin

Our member organisation Duga supports vulnerable populations in their municipality Šabac, but their outreach team is, as usual, active around Serbia.

During first days of the epidemic in Serbia, team of the Association Duga from Šabac, Serbia, visited suburbs with Roma populations and various vulnerable populations to inform them about preventive measures against coronavirus. They dedicated special attention to those who recently returned from the areas with high epidemics – Italy, Germany and Austria – who either came to visit their families back home or returned from seasonal work (especially sex workers).

This action was supported by the Regional Programme on Local Democracy in the West Balkans (ReLOaD), financed by the European Union and implemented by the UNDP Office in Serbia.

The extraordinary situation with coronavirus haven’t prevented Duga outreach team to continue HIV testing in cities around Serbia. On 9 April they have tested interested people in Kragujevac, Central Serbia, while the day after they went to Novi Sad in the Northern province of Vojvodina.

DPNSEE provided Duga with an amount of hygienic material, masks and food for vulnerable populations in their municipality. Duga also managed to get bread as donation from the organisation Human Heart of Šabac.

The Duga team, together with assistant of the Roma coordinator of the city of Šabac Sanja Petrović, distributed 122 humanitarian packages to 251 people in villages of Petlovača, Cerovac, MIšar, Letnjikovac, Pocerski Pričinović, Majur, Varna, Pocerski Metković, Bogosavac, Lipolist and the city of Šabac on 14 and 15 April.

Strategic planning to improve sustainability of HIV prevention services

Posted on 21/12/201909/01/2020 by Milutin

The Alliance for Public Health engaged a group of experts to perform a brief assessment of the latest experiences in the Serbia on financing civil society organisations with national funds, including the Global Fund national grant, and to plan on the national level for the sustainability strategy and concrete steps.

The experts visited Serbia from 16 to 20 December and held a serial of meetings with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Health Insurance Fund, CSOs and other stakeholders. At the last day of the mission, the concluding stakeholder consultation with presentation of preliminary findings was conducted.

The visit was organized by DPNSEE member organization Timočki omladinski centar, who is the national lead of the multi-country project implemented by the consortium led by the Alliance. Representatives of DPNSEE and our other member organisations Prevent and Duga also contributed at the meetings.

Pride Week in Belgrade started

Posted on 10/09/201911/09/2019 by snezana

Belgrade Pride Week 2019 has begun on Monday 9th and will end with the Belgrade Pride, which will be held on Sunday 15th September.

The opening ceremony was held at the City of Belgrade’s National Assembly. Jovanka Todorović, representing the Organizational board of Belgrade Pride, opened this year’s Pride Week and gave an overview of all the important events that will take place. Goran Miletić and Marko Mihailović, fellow members of the Organizational board, spoke about the political messages of the “I do not renounce” campaign, as well as Belgrade’s candidature to host EuroPride in 2022.

During this week Belgrade Pride will organize workshops, open talks with the community, exhibitions, movies projections, performances as well as the first Belgrade Pride Theater Festival. This year the face of the Pride is singer Sara Jovanović.

Also, the Pride Info Center with our associate member association Duga (Rainbow), will provide free HIV testing, every day during Pride Week from 3pm to 6pm, in Kralja Milana 20 in Belgrade.

The Pride walk will begin on Sunday at 5 pm on Slavija Square.

The plan and program of events during the Pride Week 2019 and plan of Pride Walk is available following link>>>

Coming Out of Unemployment

Posted on 27/05/201928/05/2019 by Milutin

Youth workers from five countries: Serbia, North Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina took part in nine days long training hosted by the Association Rainbow in Serbia (Šabac) from 8 to 16 May 2019, for obtaining adequate knowledge about social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in general. The concept of training was developed out of the study visit in Spain and personal years-long experience of the Association Rainbow as the project leader in this field.

Participants also learned how to transfer their knowledge as trainers from experienced trainers and now they are able to disseminate the acquired knowledge and skills further in their countries. This will lead to the domino effect where youth workers continue to transfer their knowledge and skills to others through their own trainings after this project is completed, whereas in doing so we increase the duration for which the aims of this project will be achieved.

The Erasmus + project “Coming Out of Unemployment” is related to raising capacity of youth workers with the aim of acquiring knowledge and skills and also raising their professional competence in working on the economic empowerment of the LGBT population through the development of social entrepreneurship. Populations which are not economically empowered cannot adequately nor in the long run advocate for the practicing of their human rights.

The project participants encompass six organizations from Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Spain, which want to share experiences and improve the economic position of LGBT persons and in this way secure the fight for their human rights and sustainability of LGBT NGOs in the long run. Members of these organizations will, through active work, acquire knowledge and skills for practical work and further transferring of knowledge in the field of developing social entrepreneurship, raising capacity and empowering young LGBT persons to become entrepreneurs.

One of the results of the project will be “The Manual on the Development of Social Entrepreneurship” which will provide guidelines for future trainers and help them realize their trainings, thus reaching medium-term and long-term aims of this project.

The concluding activity of the project will be a working conference taking place in Serbia. It will gather 100 participants from partner organizations, public institutions, embassies, the donor community, and the media with the aim of presenting the results of the project and influencing the state policy concerning the economic empowerment of the LGBT population.

More about the project is available following this link>>>

EHRA representatives visit

Posted on 18/04/2019 by Milutin

As the DPNSEE project Budget Advocacy and Monitoring in countries of South East Europe funded by Open Society Foundations (OSF) through Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA) is about to come to an end in April this year, EHRA Financial Director Tatiana Fomicheva and Sustainability and Transition Adviser Ivan Varentsov visited DPNSEE on 17 and 18 April 2019. The purposes of the visit were to make an oversight of the project related documents and provide support with regard to the development of the final financial report.

EHRA representatives had an opportunity to meet with representatives of the national coordinator organisations Margina, Juventas and Prevent and get to know better their achievements and challenges while implementing the project. It was also interesting to discuss lessons learnt, possible next steps and follow up actions. All three indicated that the main issue they faced was lack of information or very slow response to provide them by the authorities. Understanding this obstacle, an agreement was made that DPNSEE and partner organisations will propose to extend the project by September 2019.

Our guests presented us the EHRA activities in the scope of the Global Fund HIV multi-country project, content of the workshop on human rights issues for the Balkan region planned for autumn this year and the Global Fund Community, Rights and Gender Technical Assistance Program. For this occasion, we also invited our colleagues from Serbian partner and member organisations Duga, GAJP, Timok Youth Centre and Čovekoljublje.

For our guests, we also arranged meetings with Dr Jasmina Tanasić, Head of the Department for Social Affairs at the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities and Primarius Dr Danijela Simić, Head of Department for HIV infection, STI, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis, Centre for Prevention and Control of Diseases, at the Institute of Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanović Batut”.

The visit will help to better document the approach, process and results of our project as well as the lessons learnt. Documenting this our joint experience as a regional best practice and example of small grants to NGOs in recently transitioned of transitioning countries to support their sustainability and transition related advocacy activities can be of benefit to the Sustainability Bridge Funding that is about to be created by a group of international donors led by the OSF.