Community Based Health Financing (CBHF) project was implemented by Curatio International Foundation (CIF) through the Sub-Grant Agreement No: RFA-GC6-001-DT under the West Georgia Community Mobilization Initiative Project, which was administered by the Care International in Caucasus and was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). CIF started project implementation in August 2003 and completed it by August 2004, in accordance with the proposed implementation schedule.

The main goal of the CBHF project was to decrease the financial access barriers for the poor members of the targeted communities by establishing Community managed and operated health care schemes, that mobilize community’s financial resources (designated for the health care) on a pre-paid basis.

CIF identified the following objectives:

Establish 12-18 sustainable CBHF schemes in selected geographic areas, involving communities and local healthcare providers;
Utilize CBHF schemes to target the most needy within the communities;
Develop and strengthen local capacity to manage CBHF schemes;
Ensure future sustainability of CBHF schemes
The following Project Activities took place during the implementation phase:

Initial assessment of the situation in 6 regions of Western Georgia;
Selection of communities that indicated interest in establishing CBHF schemes
Through the participatory approach, designed CBHF schemes that were custom tailored to each selected community;
Introduced the designed schemes to Community Based organization through Workshops;
Identified the training needs of the Community groups and Health Providers;
Developed training materials for the Communities and Health Providers based on the identified needs;
Trained Fund Managers, and Health Providers;
The CBHF Schemes were initiated in 8 targeted communities.