News Update

In late November, USAID will host a bilateral donor meeting to nominate new members to the Timor-Leste Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  The CCM will submit funding proposals to the Global Fund and oversee and monitor the implementation of Global Fund programs in 2013 and 2014. Global Fund activities link international public and private financing to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria worldwide.

With support from FOTI, the USAID-MCC anticorruption project, Timor-Leste's Anti-Corruption Commission (CAC) hosted its second roundtable discussion on Asset Declaration in Dili. The November 15 event brought together a cross session of key stakeholders from government and civil society. The President of National Parliament and heads of Parliamentary Committees assured participants that Parliament will work with CAC and other state agencies to establish a robust asset declaration regime in Timor-Leste.

USAID's health team coordinated with the Ministry of Health on the health component of the recent visit of three U.S. Navy ships and their Marine contingent.  The military health component supported Timor-Leste's integrated community health service outreach efforts, bringing medical specialists to 10 hard-to-reach communities. At one remote site, where normally a few dozen patients would be expected, the teams treated more than 400 patients and partnered with the USAID/MCC child immunization project to provide standard immunizations.

As part of USAID's work with the House Democracy Partnership (HDP) and Timor-Leste's National Parliament, four senior staff members of Timor-Leste's Parliament are participating in special sessions organized by IRI and NDI in Washington, DC.

The New Zealand Aid Programme agreed in October to combine the governance and oversight arrangements of its community policing program with USAID's community policing program.

In partnership with the Ministry of Health and UNFPA, USAID's health improvement project has developed a program for training and supporting midwives on family planning counseling and clinical practices. Building on the success of the program earlier this year with 17 Indonesian midwives contracted by the Ministry of Health until Timorese midwives are fully trained, the project is now working with the first group of Timorese midwives, this time in Baucau District. Training for Timorese midwives in Dili and Ermera districts will start in November. 

As part of its support for the Ministry of Agriculture's climate change adaptation activities in Timor-Leste, USAID is working with NOAA to use state-of-the-art monitoring systems to track marine temperatures, acidification rates, calcification accretion, and reef microorganism diversity. The NOAA team deploying the instruments has posted a blog about their work on the NOAA site:

http://pifscblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/cred-mission-timor-leste/

USAID is working with USAID's Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) program to bring a specialist advisor to Timor-Leste to work with USAID's community horticulture project in 2013. The specialist will provide epxert value-chain analysis to support the project's efforts to build and strengthen horticulture value chains and increase the role of the private sector in rural agriculture development in Timor-Leste.

As part of USAID's work with the House Democracy Partnership (HDP) and Timor-Leste's National Parliament, two budget analysts from the Parliamentary Research Center were in Washington in October for meetings with staff from the Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service, and fiscal committees of the House of Representatives.

USAID’s HAKOHAK Community Policing Project established its first District Steering Committees in Baucau and Bobonaro Districts in early October.  With representatives from the national police, local communities, civil society and the district administration, the committees will plan and oversee the project’s activities in each district.  The committees will prioritize project resources and enable the launch of community police councils in the sub-districts where they will have the greatest impact.  In addition to ensuring community ownership of HAKOHAK activities,