Governance

A regional group of persons with expertise in a range of fields sits in oversight of the activities of the coalition. The members are:

Robert Carr, Ph.D., MSW, Co-Chair of CVC. Robert served as the first Executive Director of CVC up until 2009. He is one of the architects of CVC and convened the Kingston meeting in 2004 that led to the formation of the organization during his three-year tenure as Executive Director of Jamaica AIDS Support (www.jamaicaaidssupport.com), one of the oldest and largest HIV NGOs in the Caribbean. Dr. Carr has been an activist for social justice since the 1980s. After he returned to the Caribbean in 1998, Robert became known in the region for his work on stigma and discrimination against persons based on their HIV status. He went on to tackle human rights and development based approaches to the response to HIV, with a particular focus on vulnerable populations. He has worked in a number of Caribbean territories on these issues, and went on to be the first representative of a Caribbean NGO on the Board of UNAIDS. He is an advocate for social change, and currently works as Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at the International Council of AIDS Service Organisations (ICASO). He has published a number of books and articles on these issues including Black Nationalism in the New World (Duke, 2002), and more recently, Sexuality, Social Exclusion and Human Rights: Vulnerability in the Caribbean Context of HIV (Ian Randle Press, 2009), co-edited with Professor Christine Barrow and Drs Marjan de Bruin, both of the University of the West Indies.

Marcus Day, B.A. (Education), D.Sc. (Geography) Co-Chair of CVC is the Director of the Caribbean Drug & Alcohol Research Institute. The Institute studies the overlap between drug use and HIV infection on vulnerable populations. He is the principal investigator on at least two ongoing research projects.

Day has served as Saint Lucia’s head of delegation for the 2008 and 2009 sessions of the Commission of Narcotic Drugs in Vienna. He has coordinated a two year project to promote the implementation of non-custodial sentences for non-violent drug offenders in the Eastern Caribbean and has published a manual on implementing alternative sentencing.

He is the co-editor of a recently published volume on drug use in the Caribbean entitled “Caribbean Drugs, from Criminalisation to harm Reduction (Zed Publishing London, 2004) and a contributor in the 2009 Ian Randal published volume entitled SEXUALITY, SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND HUMAN RIGHTS with an article entitled Drugs Obscure the Human Rights Issues for Drug Users Are Demons and Jumbies Rights Holders?

He is also the coordinator of the Caribbean Harm Reduction Coalition and has co-authored of the 2002 CARICOM report Drug Demand Reduction Needs in the Caribbean Community, which continues to inform CARICOM drugs policy. He managed a 2-year Caribbean drug treatment and rehabilitation project funded by the European Commission that was instrumental in introducing harm reduction into the CARICOM Caribbean.

Dr Day founded the first low-threshold drop-in centre for homeless crack users in the Caribbean in urban Castries and currently operates a drop in centre and feeding programme in Vieux Fort.

Juanita Altenberg, MA (Health Promotion. )Honorary Board Member. She is the Executive Director and one of the founders of the Stichting Maxi Linder Association (SMLA), a non-profit, non-governmental organization that advocates for the rights of sex workers in Suriname. SMLA does groundbreaking work in empowering sex workers, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Its mission is to optimise the social, economic, mental and physical health and well-being of commercial sex workers as well as those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Juanita also serves SMLA as health educator, trainer, fieldworker and researcher. She also hosts Peace Corps and Canadian Crossroad International volunteers.

Juanita is an important figure in the National AIDS Programme in Suriname. She has served as the Prison Project Coordinator, the Counselling and Testing Coordinator, and the Sex Workers Project Coordinator. She is also a member of Suriname's Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) for the Global Fund to fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria, a member of the Regional Council of HIV/AIDS Change Agents, a member of the Women's Parliament Forum, Chairperson of the Konmandra (“Come Together”) Network, and Board Member of an NGO sheltering sexually abused children. Her past research activities cover topics such as child sex workers, evaluating needs of youth and commercial sex workers, and condom outreach. She has recently conducted a behaviour survey among 250 sex workers and 300 men who have sex with men.

Harry Beauvais, M.D. M.P.H, Technical Director, of FOSREF (Foundation for Reproductive Health and Family Life Education) www.fosref.org.fosref.org, an NGO that has been operating in Haiti for the past 21 years. With significant experience in programme management, FOSREF is one of the leaders in Haiti on Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS, Family planning services. This organization received the UN Population award in 2007 for its role in improvement of many aspects of population problems and the development of innovative strategies. During his 18 years of work at FOSREF, Dr. Beauvais has contributed greatly to the development of new concepts, approaches and strategies for providing services to particular groups such as youth and sex workers. These strategies have allowed for the continuous upgrading and expansion of the agency to the point where it now has centres throughout the country. Dr. Beauvais is an epidemiologist in charge of research at FOSREF and has already published many studies in well-known Journals. He has attended several international meetings that have contributed to the sharing of his expertise with other working in the field.

Veronica Cenac is an attorney at law in St Lucia, where she practices. She is also a leading figure in AIDS Action Foundation, and anchors the human rights work of CVC. She was a leading figure in the legal assessments of a number of Caribbean countries as part of PANCAP’s law and human rights strategy, facilitating community consultations, public fora to address human rights implications of discriminatory laws on the books as well as the of existing legislation.

Joan Didier, Executive Director (volunteer) of the St. Lucia AIDS Action Foundation (AAF) which is an umbrella NGO based in St. Lucia that works with a wide range of stakeholders, including the private sector, persons living with HIV and AIDS, youth, men who have sex with men, and sex workers.

She is also the Director of the OECS Regional Co-ordinating Mechanism for the current OECS Global Fund Grant. Miss Didier is an experienced Trainer and Facilitator with expertise in Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Behavior Change Communication, Advocacy and Human Rights. She has been instrumental in helping to get the St. Lucia private sector involved in HIV and has succeeded in helping the private sector to develop HIV policies for their enterprises. She is also a human rights advocate and assisted in the organization of the PLHIV support group TLC ,Miss Didier has represented both St. Lucia and the OECS at several regional and international meetings.

Mario Kleinmoedig Studied Sociology with a degree in Media Science and Journalism, and is a long-time human rights and environmental activist in his native Curaçao. He co-founded both the Curacao Environmental movement Amigu di Tera, the human rights movements DEDE (Defende Derechi) and Inklushon, and the National Curacao LGBT Rights organization FOKO (Fundashon Orguyo Korsou), which he presently chairs. He is Chair as well of CARIFLAGS (Caribbean Forum for Liberation and Acceptance of Genders and Sexualities), an upcoming group of regional activists formed to address a broad range of issues including health, human rights, culture and spirituality for the Caribbean LGBT community, including the wider MSM population. He is currently working as political secretary with the opposition in the Curacao parliament. He ran as an openly gay candidate for office in 2007, and is also known as storyteller and writer in his native language Papiamento (Zum Zum di Shinshon, an environmental adventure book for children, published in 2005)

R. Anthony Lewis, PhD. Rohan serves as CVC Board Secretary. He has been an advocate and strategist on human rights and social justice issues since he was a teenager, and went on to work as a reporter specialising in, among other things, HIV and AIDS reporting (1993 - 1995). He was Director of Advocacy and Public Education at Jamaica AIDS Support between 2003 and 2005 and also worked in Targeted Interventions for MSM, inmates and sex workers. He is a trained translator who speaks French, Spanish, English, Jamaican and Haitian Kreyol. He has represented CVC in a number of regional and international fora, including the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting, the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City and the Global Forum on MSM and HIV Pre-Conference, training meetings of the PANCAP law, ethics and human rights program, and the PANCAP Regional Condom Policy process with a mandate to ensure it addressed an enabling environment for condom access for youth, sex workers, gay and bisexual men, and other at risk groups. He has research interests in HIV and sexual behaviour among Afro-Americans as well as in Caribbean creolisation. He has also published widely on Caribbean culture, the politics of Caribbean creole languages, and on controversial issues such as homophobia and Jamaican culture. He currently lectures in Communication and French, at the University of Technology, Jamaica.

Santo Rosario a sociologist by training is the Executive Director of the Centre for Integrated Training and Research (COIN). Over the past 19 years Rosario work has supported and strengthened disenfranchised groups empowering them to set up their own organizations. Examples of this include “Amigos Siempre Amigos,” an NGO by and for the MSM community, which is now a leader in the field in its own right; and MODEMU, the first Sex Workers Association in the Dominican Republic and indeed the Caribbean. Rosario is also a co-founder of the National Coalition of AIDS Service Organizations (ONGSIDA) which helps coordinate civil society’s response to HIV/AIDS in the Dominican Republic.

Leonardo Sánchez, CVC Board Treasurer has wide experience in HIV/AIDS prevention. He is an expert in behavior modification and the evaluation of prevention programme. He is a national and international outstanding activist in human rights promotion and defense, in particular against homophobia. Currently, he is the Executive Director to Amigos Siempre Amigos (ASA)and is a facilitator of learning processes based on human growth and development, as well as Guidance, Emotional Support, Human Sexuality, STD, HIV and AIDS for different organizations, government and non government, national and international.

He has researched different population groups, evaluating process and impact of various educational interventions, studies on knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and practices among gay, transexual, transgender, and bisexual populations. He participated as a co-researcher in the first etnography of masculine sexual work carried out by Columbia University and Amigos Siempre Amigos (ASA) in the Dominican Republic, as well as other quality studies to design and develop educational material on human sexuality, HIV and AIDS, and Sexual Transmission Disease (STD).

As a community activist, he is a member of several national and international organization such as the National Alliance of Gay Men, Trans, and other MSM, Presidential Council for AIDS, the Dominican Republic NGO’s on AIDS Coalition, Asociación para la Salud Integral y la Ciudadanía en América Latina (ASICAL) and the Association for Integral Health and Cirtizenship in Latin America.

John Waters M.D., D.Sc., M.Sc., M.A. (Oxon) is a medical doctor with extensive experience working with vulnerable groups both clinically and in project design and implementation. He is the Project Manager of the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) funded “Youth in the Real World” project, as well as clinical director of the Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral (COIN) Community Clinic. Prior to joining COIN he was Coordinator for the Caribbean for the GTZ supra-regional project ProSure – Youth and AIDS in the Caribbean. He is a Board member of the Interagency Committee on “Sexual Health and Reproductive Rights for Young People in the Dominican Republic,” chaired by the UNFPA; on the CVCC board on the Care and Treatment, Commercial Sex Workers and Youth subcommittees; Consultant Physician for COTRAVET a support group for the transvestite/transgender community, Movimiento de Mujeres Unidas (MODEMU) an organization of sex workers, ASA an NGO serving the MSM community in the Dominican Republic; and a member of the Groupe d’Action Régional (GAR) a network of NGOs working with Commercial Sex Workers in the French speaking Caribbean.

Ethel Pengel is the founder and CEO of the Double Positive Foundation which is an NGO in Surinam catering for women and girls affected by and living with HIV. As someone who is herself a woman living with HIV, she has been involved with numerous local and regional entities inclusive of the Caribbean Network of Sero-Positives (CRN +). She is also a member of Suriname’s Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) and also member of the Advisory Board of the Ministry of Health regarding HIV/AIDS.
She has managed two grassroots organizations (Stichting Broko Doro and Stichting Mamio Namen project Suriname) both of which had an enviable track record of providing care and support for persons living with HIV and also developed income generating opportunities for the said group.

Max Melin, is the President of "Entraide Gwadloup", an NGO in Guadeloupe that works in HIV prevention with most at risk populations such as MSM and sex workers. Formerly affiliated to the French based organization SIDACTIÓN, EntreAIdes broke away to pursue a programming with greater relevance to the Caribbean context

Dona Da Costa Martinez, EMBA, joined the Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago (FPATT) in August 1985 as Research, Evaluation and Training Officer. In June 1990 she was promoted to the position of Director of Operations and in May 1991 was elevated to the position of Deputy Executive Director, a position she held for eight years. In April 1999 she was appointed Executive Director of the FPATT, the position she holds at present.

She is the Chairperson of the Prevention Sub Committee of the National AIDS Coordinating Committee (NACC) since 2004 and is a member of several other multidisciplinary committees including a Technical Working Committee on Sexual and Reproductive Health appointed by the Ministry of Health.

Under her leadership at FPATT, De Living Room, the only centre in Trinidad and Tobago providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care services to young persons less than 25 years was born. She has also spearheaded the introduction of additional services at FPATT e.g. health care services for sex workers, and other at risk populations; the integration of voluntary counseling and testing for HIV into SRH services; post abortion counseling; and advocating for the provision of safe abortion services for women who choose to have one.

Management Team

Ian McKnight, MSc, Executive Director has been involved in HIV development work since 1991 when he co-founded Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL), and served as the JASL Executive Director from 1991 until 2002. He later performed the role of Director of Targeted Interventions and Director for Social Marketing and Public Education.

He proceeded to become the Violence Prevention Specialist and Media and Communications Specialist on JA-STYLE, a USAID-funded/Ministry of Health adolescent reproductive health project and later would be employed as the Programmes Manager of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC) from 200-November 2009.

As a Facilitator, McKnight has given service to PANCAP/CARICOM’s "Champion for Change" initiative and the Saint Maarten National HIV Programme's Advocacy and Policy Development Training. As a trainer, McKnight's clients include UNIFEM, Fluid Bodies Project in New York, the Caribbean HIV AIDS Alliance, Kwanza Productions and Value Added Services.

As Chairman of Partners for Community Change, McKnight’s focus has been on the external debt relief campaign for Jamaica. This former Writer for the University of the West Indies (UWI) Masters in Counselling Programme has served as Consultant to the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) contract with the Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) and the AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia (ACNS).

Since 2006, Ian McKnight has served as Chairman of JASL and sits on the Boards of organizations such as the Ashe Performing Arts Ensemble and Children for Community Change (3Cs). McKnight has also chaired the Civil Society Forum (CSF) of Jamaica – a local coalition advocating for the greater inclusion of civil society organisation in decision making.

This member of the Caribbean Treatment Action Group [CTAG], a Caribbean Regional group of activists committed to treatment access and literacy for persons living with HIV or AIDS in the Caribbean also belongs to the Caribbean Sex Work Coalition which lobs for, among other things, the legalization of sex work.

Ivan Cruickshank, M.Sc and CVC Programme Manager, is a founding member of the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life and volunteered for over ten years before being employed first as its Director of Targeted Interventions (2005- 2006) and then as Director of Development (2007). He also acted as Executive Director in 2007 and continues to co-host “Life’s Voices” for the same organisation. He was also a Presenter at the 2006 International AIDS Conference on issues affecting MARPs in the Jamaican Context.

Cruickshank has led a distinguished parallel career in academia having lectured at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in areas including but not limited to Development, Public Sector Management and Public Policy at the University of the West Indies. Additionally, he has tutored with the University of London, and held adjunct lectureships with the Management Institute for National Development and the Jamaica Constabulary Staff College. He has also supervised the completion of M.Sc Theses for over twenty students in topics some of which include Change Management in the Public Sector, Performance Management in Executive Agencies, Agencification and Good Governance, Reassessing Education Policies in the Caribbean and NGOs as a policy partner in HIV response,

His work with Edwin Jones titled Making the CARICOM administrative machinery work: the decentralization and leadership factor has been published in Kenneth Hall’s Caribbean Imperatives: Regional Governance and Integrated Development, Ian Randle Publishers (2005). In addition, he has presented at several conferences and has had his work featured in the Social and Economic Studies Journal. He was a researcher at Warwick Business School where he did work examining the process of regionalisation of a local government.

He has served on the Boards and Advisory panels of organizations such as the Jamaica Network of Sero Positives, the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network, Latin American and Caribbean Council of AIDS Service Organizations (LACCASO), HEART Trust/NTA, Member National Youth Policy Review Committee and the Prime Ministerial Advisory Council

A trained Facilitator, Cruickshank has worked with and made presentations to numerous groups a few of which include the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JAYAN), Latin America and Caribbean AIDS Service Organisation( LACCASO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Caribbean Coalition of National AIDS Programme Coordinators (CCNAPC), Centre for HIV and AIDS Research Training (CHART) and Ministries of Health of Jamaica and of St. Maarten