| Sample LOI to the African Women's Development Foundation for an international non-profit Value of grant: $19,250 Organizational Information
1. What is your organization’s purpose? AHOPE Ethiopia’s mission is to serve the children of Ethiopia, with a primary emphasis on caring for orphans infected with HIV. The need is enormous. Between 2001 and 2007 the number of children who lost their mother or father or both parents to AIDS rose by more than 100%, to over 650,000. In Addis Ababa, in two pleasant, well-staffed Children's Homes, orphans who are HIV positive and have no extended family to care for them, receive care from AHOPE Ethiopia’s professional staff. Many of these children are now finding new families through adoption and AHOPE Ethiopia’s Community Outreach Program offers support for caretakers and others. The history of AHOPE Ethiopia begins in 1997. Although the NGO was formed in 2004, its roots extend to a US organization called Adoption Advocates International (AAI) that began to provide adoption service for orphaned children in Ethiopia. AAI quickly saw a need for care facilities for the thousands of orphans in Ethiopia. In 1997 over 125,000 Ethiopians were contracting HIV each year. Over 50,000 men, women and children were dying from AIDS. AAI quickly discovered that many of the children who came to their facility in Addis tested positive for HIV. In response, AAI established a second home, fashioned to meet the needs of HIV/AIDS children. In 2002, Merrily Ripley, Director of AAI asked Kathryn Olsen, a widely respected non-profit administrator, to establish a non-profit charity to assist in funding a home exclusively for HIV-positive children. Thus was born ENAT HIV Children’s Center, an Ethiopian NGO and AHOPE for Children, a U.S. 501(c)(3) charity devoted to fundraising for the NGO.
On July 12, 2004, the ENAT HIV Children’s Center was closed and replaced by a new NGO, AHOPE Ethiopia. The ENAT children and facilities were placed in the care of AHOPE Ethiopia. Thus AHOPE Ethiopia has taken a prominent role in the care of HIV/AIDS orphans in Ethiopia.
In September, 2005, AHOPE Ethiopia established the first pediatric program to provide the life saving antiretroviral (ARV) medications in Ethiopia. These medicines are credited with the significant world-wide decline in the number of deaths from AIDS, beginning in 2004. However, the drugs are still not widely available in Ethiopia. Only a third of people needing the drug received treatment in 2007 (WHO/AIDS page 13) AHOPE Ethiopia’s rare, life-saving ARV program, for children in partnership with Worldwide Orphans Foundation, is administered through WWO’s newly established pediatric AIDS clinic in Addis Ababa. The focus of care and outreach changed dramatically with the arrival of the ARVs. What was once considered a hospice program for anticipating death now became a program of education and hope for a future for every child.
Since 2004, the ARV program at AHOPE Ethiopia treated over 300 children. Country wide only 4534 children were treated in 2007. Thus, AHOPE Ethiopia’s is making a significant contribution, to saving the HIV/AIDS children of Ethiopia. An East Africa program in the Addis Ababa region of Ethiopia, AHOPE Ethiopia serves children (ages 5-15) from throughout the region. The children receive food, shelter, and clothing, recreation, psycho-social support and medical care. The organization also maintains an outreach program for members of the community to come to the facility to learn about HIV/AIDS, how it is transmitted, how infection can be prevented, and how to safely care for individuals with the illness. This innovative outreach program gives the children who live in the facility a chance to meet people from the community at large. The program is beneficial to all parties and results in an understanding of the illness and those who are afflicted by it, thus addressing the role of ignorance in creating a cycle of fear and rejection. With the outreach program comes an opportunity and incentive to engage in cooperative relationships with local and international organizations with the same goals and objectives, and to invent new programs that serve to educate the community. Among the partners with which AHOPE Ethiopia has joined are CIAI, WWO and K.I.D.S. It is also pursuing relationships with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, Physicians for Peace, and USAID. By increasing the size and extent of community outreach programs, AHOPE Ethiopia can touch more people and potentially have an impact on slowing the growth of the epidemic through education. The ultimate solution is getting information about the illness to the greatest number of people, and meanwhile providing services to the orphans. The central purpose of the community outreach program is to raise the capacity of AHOPE Ethiopia to address issues of how the virus is spread. In short, by increasing the scale of operations, adding or growing programs, and reaching out to partners through shared goals, AHOPE Ethiopia is confronting the problem of an epidemic that continues to decimate nearly 10% of the adult population of Ethiopia. Community education is foremost among them. 2. Structure
AHOPE Ethiopia is managed in Addis by a staff of 4 administrators, all of whom are women who answer to a board in Ethiopia consisting of 7 community leaders plus 3 key staff and the Executive Director of the NGO. As the benefactor of donations from AHOPE for Children in Seattle, Washington, the Ethiopia board presents a quarterly report. The Seattle Board consists of 6 community leaders, including 5 women. They participate in established subcommittees, including a Fundraising Committee, Infrastructure Committee, and Nominating Committee and they meet quarterly to review the activities of AHOPE Ethiopia, fundraising issues, and strategic planning. The Executive Director of AHOPE Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Sidisse Buli submits a quarterly financial report. She acts as a representative who can speak for the Ethiopian activities. AHOPE Ethiopia employs a staff of 24, including administration and caregivers. AHOPE Ethiopia does not have members, its sole purpose is the care of HIV/AIDS orphans. It presently cares for 149 HIV/AIDS orphans. About one-half are girls. AHOPE Ethiopia serves the interests of women by caring for girls who have HIV/AIDS and by sharing information about the disease with women caregivers in the community. Women are decision makers for AHOPE Ethiopia. They are the majority of the Board and they occupy the top administrative posts. All decisions made by the Board and by the administrators are made following discussions of the probable outcomes of proposals.
3. Activities and/or Programs
In addition to its function of providing care for HIV/AIDS orphans, AHOPE Ethiopia carries on an active education campaign that brings members of the community to the facility to meet with AHOPE Ethiopia caregivers. This is an opportunity for the community to meet people who daily provide holistic care for HIV/AIDS children. They learn the facts about how HIV is transmitted and how to care for people with the virus and/or AIDS. AHOPE Ethiopia will continue the outreach program, formalize it, and offer it to a wider population. The Workshop facilities will be modernized, the Workshop facilities enlarged, and the staff trained to offer medical information as well as psycho-social support for those who may be caring for HIV/AIDS children or may want their HIV/AIDS child to rejoin the family. When AHOPE Ethiopia disseminates information about the illness showing that the shunning, which is so harmful to a child’s psycho-social wellbeing, is due to ignorance, the community at large may see that they can integrate these children without subjecting them to the pain of rejection. As a bonus, the community will gain information echoed in the first-hand experiences of trusted professionals. This informal education process has been shown to be an effective way of communicating medical information to the lay person. The work of AHOPE Ethiopia continues to offer holistic care for children who are affected by HIV with the aim of bringing these children up from a life of rejection and certain death to one of social integration, hope and health. In short, these children are in dire need of the support provided by the professionals at AHOPE Ethiopia, plus the support only available in the community. Unfortunately, the latter in Ethiopia is still subject to superstitions about how the illness is transmitted, its effects and the risks of mere proximity to those afflicted. Since its inception in 2004, AHOPE Ethiopia has been caring for an increasing number of HIV/AIDS orphans (90 in 2004, 149 in 2008). As children graduate to life outside the facility, more children are admitted and their care begins immediately, according to their needs. The organization presently offers medical care, including anti-retroviral medications and regular visits by part-time pediatricians, staff nurses and social workers. In addition to food, shelter and clothing, AHOPE Ethiopia provides recreation and education, either in the facility or in public schools. Finally, since about 2006, AHOPE Ethiopia has opened its doors to adult women from the community who come to the facility to attend instructional workshops about AIDS. Often this is a preliminary totaling a relative from the facility back into their home. Because information about the illness travels by word of mouth far beyond the confines of the facility, these small workshops have already had a positive effect on the community and its understanding of HIV/AIDS. A disproportionate number of women have died of AIDS in Ethiopia every year since 1991, when doctors began gathering the statistics. 54 % of HIV/AIDS adults are women. Of all Ethiopian adults infected with HIV in 2007, an estimated 530,000 out of 980,000 were women, accounting for nearly 40,000 more women infected than men. The cause for this statistic can be found in the studies of how the community uses widely available testing and education. In 2007 women were only 42% of nearly 2 million adults took advantage of regular testing for HIV. It is revealing that in a study of Ethiopian adults’ knowledge about the disease, only 1 in 5 women could answer basic questions, compared to 1 in 3 men. If women can become more aware of how HIV is contracted, then the incidence of this killer disease can be lowered significantly. Thousands of women will be saved – women who can get an education, raise families, and make a contribution to Ethiopian society. Due to its success, AHOPE Ethiopia’s educational program will be advanced by an investment in staff training, building improvements and greater outreach to the community of caregivers and other adults. AHOPE Ethiopia will provide a facility by renovating an existing room, which will be well-equipped with learning materials, teaching aids and furniture. Funding for the project described in this proposal, including the Community Outreach Program and HIV/AIDS and anti-stigma workshops, will lead to a program that will help to ease the pain and suffering of children with HIV/AIDS and through informal education, bring the whole community to an understanding of this scourge.
Grant Request Information AHOPE Ethiopia requests $19,250 in AWDF funding to be used in 2009-2010 for a Community Outreach Program room for workshops on HIV/AIDS at the AHOPE Ethiopia facility in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Plans include renovating an existing workshop room and re-furnishing it. This grant request also includes office supplies, special learning materials for illiterate clients, and the transport of 200 books from New York to Addis. This project will be monitored by the Executive Director of AHOPE Ethiopia in Addis, her staff and the board of AHOPE Ethiopia. A final report, prepared by the administrative team in Addis, with approval by the board of AHOPE Ethiopia, will be submitted to AWDF within 12 months following the award of the grant.
Project Budget African Women's Development Fund Grant Proposal | Project: Community Outreach Program (2009-2010) |
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| Expenses |
| Comments | Renovation | $12,000 | 2008 estimate plus 20% inflation | Materials for Illiterates | $3,000 | assuming minimum 35% of clients will require special materials (these materials will be given to clients) | Teaching materials | $3,000 | for literates, to be given to clients | Transport of books | $1,200 | air freight of 200 books from KIDS in New York | Staff time | $3,650 | 200 hours ($18.30 per hour) | Total Expenses | $22,850 |
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| Revenue |
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| AWDF | $19,250 | Grant | AHC USA | $3,600 | Contribution from USA-AHOPE for Children | Total Revenue | $22,850 |
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This grant will fund an outreach program that is central to the long-term objectives of the organization; namely, to alleviate the suffering of the HIV/AIDS orphans of Ethiopia by giving them a chance for longer, brighter lives. When ignorance about AIDS is finally banished from Ethiopia, then people with the disease and people who are not infected can inhabit the same ground without fear. By encouraging women to come to AHOPE Ethiopia to attend a Community Outreach Program, where they will learn about the illness, how it is spread, how to avoid infection, and how to care for those with HIV/AIDS, AHOPE Ethiopia will contribute to progress toward freeing Ethiopians from the superstition and needless fear that only add to the suffering. Much of the plight of children with HIV/AIDS is attributable to superstition. AIDS in particular is widely feared. The people who are diagnosed with it are shunned, foremost because stigmatization so quickly and tenaciously follows infection. Education will enlighten the community and serve to alleviate the pain of shunning and the blight of prejudice, superstition, and ignorance. |