CARE Announces $1.5 Million Gift From William H. Gates Foundation

ATLANTA -- CARE today announced a gift of $1.5 million from the William H. Gates Foundation. The gift will go to fund family planning and reproductive health services in Ghana for approximately 120,000 miners and mine industry workers who are at high risk for HIV/AIDS. In addition, the monies will launch a reproductive health program in Honduras.

In Ghana, the Gates Foundation donation will strengthen CARE's SAPIMA project - an innovative HIV/AIDS prevention project which addresses high-risk behavior among migrant workers in the country's Ashanti gold fields. The funds will help train a group of peer educators—already working in HIV/AIDS—in family planning and reproductive health services.

"The Gates Foundation gift allows CARE to help people make a sustainable difference in their lives. We have strong, trusting relationships with the Ashanti miners through SAPIMA, and now miners and their families will have access to information about reproductive health," says Maurice Middleberg, Director of Health and PopulationPrograms.

The Gateses' gift also will help launch a reproductive health program in Honduras' Sula Valley—where 500 factories employ approximately 100,000 young people, 70 percent of whom are women between the ages of 16 and 24. Through education and community mobilization, involving employees, factory owners and senior management, the CARE project will utilize the strength of a workplace community where people share new information and educate each other.

CARE is one of the world's largest international development and relief organizations. Today, CARE International reaches 24 million people in 62 developing and emerging nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.