The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Awards US$150,000 Grant to the Gauteng Partnership for Grassroots AIDS Action

GAUTENG, South Africa — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today awarded the Gauteng Partnership for Grassroots AIDS Action (GPGAA) a US$150,000 grant to increase the reach and effectiveness of its AIDS education, prevention and support services, reduce program overlap and better document and disseminate best practices.

For three years, with the support of the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, under the Women’s HIV/AIDS Resource Project (WHARP), the Gauteng Partnership for Grassroots AIDS Action has served as an umbrella organization involving four medium-sized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who, in-turn, work with smaller community-based organizations. These NGOs are The Township AIDS Project (TAP), Society for Women Against AIDS in Africa-SA (SWAA-SA), Positive Women’s Network and AIDS Care and Counseling Training (ACCT).

Using the new grant, GPGAA will support these NGOs in a number of their ongoing initiatives including the following four major activities.

• Society for Women Against AIDS in Africa-SA, through work with its partner community-based organizations, mobilizes women, men, young people, families and communities at grassroots level towards promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and providing education, care and support services. SWAA-SA advocates increased access to treatment and care for women, and services and policies to mitigate the threats of HIV to children.
   
• The Positive Women’s Network works to improve the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS. It reaches out to families of infected women to promote acceptance, care and support. Through its counseling activities, PWN provides HIV+ women who chose to disclose, the skills to do so, and to sensitize key community segments about the need to reduce HIV-related stigma. HIV+ women contributing to the fight against HIV/AIDS are given due recognition through the activities of PWN, and their experiences used to motivate individuals, groups and communities.
   
• AIDS Counseling Care and Training works to improve the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS and improve community acceptance and attitudes to prevention and care, by counseling and managing HIV positive people in Soweto (approximately 100 women per month). It introduces and expands support for family-based care and services for people living with HIV/AIDS, establishing peer psychosocial support programs for women and men with HIV/AIDS, and conducting educational campaigns within all communities to facilitate an understanding of HIV transmission.
• Township AIDS Project works to prevent HIV transmission by focusing on pre-teenagers and adolescents, providing education and training on the risk of infection, and building the capacity of infected and affected individuals, families and communities to acquire coping skills in dealing with the impact of HIV/AIDS.

“Nongovernmetal and community-based organizations are driving the support and services available to those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS,” said Theresa Strydom, Director of SWAA-SA. “Increased funding, from organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is essential to ensuring we can sustain and improve our services.”

“Stopping the transmission of HIV is the foundation’s number one priority,” said Dr. Helene Gayle, former Director, HIV/AIDS & TB for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Gauteng currently has an infection rate of 29.3%. The most effective way to arrest the further spread of this devastating disease is to build on the comprehensive strategies these community-based services are already creating – strategies that focus on prevention, education and reducing the stigma of HIV/AIDS.”