Frequently Asked Questions
- What does the term 'grassroots' mean?
- How do you choose which projects to assist?
- How is Project ChildCare Foundation unique in its strategy to create sustainability?
- Where is Project ChildCare Foundation programming situated in terms of global donor aid and development/capacity building funding?
- Why is Project ChildCare Foundation's current focus and funding committed to projects in communities with high HIV prevalence rates and in Sub-Saharan African countries?
- How does Project ChildCare Foundation address 'feminization' of HIV/AIDS pandemic?
- Does Project ChildCare Foundation sell, trade, rent or share donor information?
What does the term 'grassroots' mean?
How do you choose which projects to assist?
How is Project ChildCare Foundation unique in its strategy to create sustainability?
Where is Project ChildCare Foundation programming situated in terms of global donor aid and development/capacity building funding?
Why is Project ChildCare Foundation's current focus and funding committed to projects in communities with high HIV prevalence rates and in Sub-Saharan African countries?
How does Project ChildCare Foundation address 'feminization' of HIV/AIDS pandemic?
Does Project ChildCare Foundation sell, trade, rent or share donor information?
Project ChildCare Foundation's mandate emphasizes its support for grassroots, community-based projects. This term grassroots is often used generally to describe a wide variety of local community groups and movements with wide ranging definitions that encompass groups described as "the common people", "a network of citizens", "society at the local level," henceforth, made use to suggest a variety of community based organizations (CBOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
We at Project ChildCare Foundation adopt a more traditional understanding of the term in determining and accounting support for our local projects. Unlike initiatives arranged by traditional power structures, grassroots movements are driven from below by community members. Thus, Project ChildCare Foundation is currently only funding projects started by community members (from the ground up) who could not ignore the need of children in their community and their own social responsibility to address these children's suffering. In each case, these community members have, regardless of the availability of resources, dedicated their own lives and galvanized their communities' participation in order to establish these projects. Project ChildCare Foundation is honoured to be able to address our global responsibility by facilitating and organizing the concern and support of our own community to those fellow communities in such pronounced need.
Guided by the essence of early nineteenth century definitions of 'grassroots', Project ChildCare Foundation's projects can be said to have "grown from the soil of people's hard necessities.1 "It is from this 'soil', and through our collective dedication, that the appropriate needs are addressed and that communities maintain the necessary engagement required to ensure healthier childhoods for these children.
Our project selection encompasses a variety of criteria, which have primarily been determined by the principles of our mandate: namely, to support and provide assistance for local grassroots capacity building projects. These criteria can be broadly divided into two categories: criteria relating to local needs, and (ii) those relating to sustainability and dependable accountability. While addressing traditional determinants of sustainability by funding income-generating projects, Project ChildCare Foundation utilizes a broader understanding of sustainability by incorporating relationship-building strategies in our agreements with each and every project, and by striving for fair and realistic accountability and balances within its evaluation processes. A vital component of our criteria relating to sustainability is that we maintain very close contacts and mutually open relationships with the local community and grassroots projects it has chosen to support, stemming from the conviction that with this relationship comes a shared responsibility between Project ChildCare Foundation and its projects.
Through prior project management experience, Project ChildCare Foundation has discovered that the specific skills and knowledge-base which make an effective "on-the-ground" programme facilitator are not necessarily the same as those necessary in effectively reporting to funding agencies and governments. For this reason, Project ChildCare Foundation believes that, with our projects, we share the responsibility of ensuring accurate and comprehensive reporting practices that provide both fiscal accountability and responsibility for the most effective delivery of prescribed services, in reference to and in compliance with our project funding agreements. With this objective in mind, we also offer our organizational and administrative assistance, expertise, and capacity to every project we support. These innovative and attentive donorship practices ensure added accountability to our donors, as well as from the local projects we support, and the communities they aim to serve.
Within prevailing global health theories and policymaking, funding is often differentiated as either aid or development focused. We at Project ChildCare Foundation firmly believe that in order for development activities to be successful, a minimum standard of basic needs (such as food, shelter and security) must be met. So while the Foundation utilizes specific selection criteria assessing for sustainability and capacity building elements, we also provide assistance for the basic needs of the individual and community. For example, a project might be given funding for capacity building activities, such as psychosocial support provision or income-generating initiatives and simultaneously receive aid directed towards nutritional programming and healthcare services.
At present, Project ChildCare Foundation has chosen the HIV/AIDS pandemic and Sub-Saharan Africa as its issue and region of focus. We believe that HIV/AIDS is one, if not the, most immediate threat to the health and wellbeing of children across the globe. The statistics and the nature of the virus support such immediacy.
Currently, there are 2.3 million HIV+ children in the world and 87% of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa.2 Ninety percent of these 2.3 million children were infected through partner to mother to child transmission. In the developed world, it has been clearly demonstrated that the use of antiretrovirals, elective caesarean sections, and the avoidance of breastfeeding reduces the risk of transmission to less than 0.5%,3 yet globally less than 10% of HIV+ women have access to prevention of partner to mother to child transmission services (PPMTCT).4 While there is a catastrophic lack of access to treatment, this is particularly so for HIV+ children. 14% of new infections are in children yet children only comprise 5% of those who are currently on treatment.5 Without treatment, 35% of children are dead by their first birthday, 50% by their second, and 60% won't celebrate their third.6 Much of the deficit in the lack of access to treatment for children is a result of the fact that 87% percent of HIV+ children live in poverty; therefore large multinational companies find less of a financial incentive to produce the child-specific tools needed, such as diagnostic tests for infants and affordable fixed paediatric doses.
There is a second epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, that of the 1 in 8 children who have become orphaned. This has resulted in 13 million children in Sub-Saharan African having lost mothers or fathers, with another 10 million projected to be orphaned by 2015.8 For both HIV infected and affected children, the root cause of the pandemic-poverty-must be addressed. Project ChildCare Foundation is proud to support grassroots projects in Sub-Saharan Africa that assist in providing services to those people made vulnerable to HIV by the extreme poverty in which they live. For example in Zambia, home of the Kondwa Centre for Orphans, between 30-40% of children do not attend school, multiplying the effects of extreme poverty for generations to come. Project ChildCare Foundation provides funds that, through the hard work of the staff at the Kondwa Centre, go towards providing education for children in Ng'ombe, one of the poorest communities in Zambia, if not all of Africa. As the mandate of Project ChildCare Foundation is to bring about real and sustained improvements for children globally, we assess the two-pronged epidemics of paediatric infections and of orphans to clearly be the priority in the in improving the health and wellbeing of children.
Project ChildCare Foundation strongly believes that the impact of gender inequality in driving the transmission of HIV cannot be understated. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where at present all of Project ChildCare Foundation's projects reside, there are three HIV+ women (aged 15-24) for every HIV+ man9. A variety of factors such as biological predisposition, economic dependency, decreased legal rights, traditional gender roles, sex work, and gender violence leave women more vulnerable to HIV infection. Increased education resources, food assistance programmes, and gender sensitization training for men have been shown to decrease HIV prevalence by helping women to be empowered and therefore more able to negotiate safer sex practices. For instance, studies from Zimbabwe illustrate that adolescent girls who are not attending school are six times more likely to be HIV+ than girls currently enrolled in school10.
Given the evidence for the influence of gender inequality in the transmission of HIV, Project ChildCare Foundation is pleased to offer to each of our projects, in addition to our current educational resources and food assistance programmes, funding specifically earmarked for the inclusion of culturally-appropriate gender education in their current curriculum. Thus, gender sensitivity is included as an indicator in the monitoring and evaluation strategies developed by Project ChildCare Foundation with respect to each of its individual projects. For further information concerning the feminization of HIV/AIDS, please refer to the United Nations Development Fund for Women's (UNIFEM's) HIV/AIDS website: http://www.genderandaids.org
In no way will Project ChildCare Foundation sell, trade, rent or share any donor information to other organizations whether they are commercial or non-profit. The privacy and confidentiality of our donors is important to us and thus donor information will be respected and protected.
1 Beveridge, A.J., Eigen's Political & Historical Quotations, http://www.politicalquotes.org
2 MSF (rest of reference to be added on Mon.
3 UNICEF-UK, 2006. HIV/AIDS: PMTCT Plus. London, England.
4 PPMTCT is often referred to as PMTCT, as the word 'partner' is usually not included with this term. Project ChildCare Foundation believes that it is important to include the word 'partner' as to affirm that HIV should not be stigmatized as being driven or originating from women alone.
5 7 8 UNAIDS, 2006. Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. Geneva, Switzerland.
6 MSF (reference to be added in full soon)
9 Interagency Coalition of AIDS and Development, 2006. HIV/AIDS & Gender Issues.