Key Learnings Firelight's Grantmaking Work in
Africa Based on remarks presented at the |
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Background on the Foundation
& our approach to supporting children The AIDS pandemic's effect on children within the context of an already impoverished setting is complex and far ranging. More than 90% of the world's HIV/AIDS orphans reside in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current estimates are nearing 12 million, and millions more children are expected to be orphaned in the coming years. These children, whose trauma begins long before their parents die, are often robbed of more than their family of origin. Many are also robbed of their livelihoods, their education, and their hopes for the future. Our response to this crisis, in keeping with the principles set forth by similarly-focused donors on orphans and vulnerable children, is child-centered, family and community-focused, and human rights based. For Firelight Foundation, a child-centered focus means that we are addressing needs at different stages of development—infancy through the onset of adulthood. It also means that we are attending to different and interrelated areas of development, such as basic physical care, educational needs, and psychosocial support. A family and community-focused approach means that we acknowledge the critical and primary roles of the family and the local community to protect and ensure the development of children. We support initiatives that enhance the financial viability of the family, such as income-generating activities for caregivers and vocational education for older orphans. As caregivers take on the responsibility of caring for increasing numbers of orphaned children, programs that offer caregiver training, respite care and other types of support become essential. We have learned that home-based care programs and community day care centers are preferable to orphanages, which are difficult and costly to sustain, and tend to isolate children, leaving them ill-prepared for community life. However, we recognize that residential care can sometimes provide a critical service, especially for acutely ill and abandoned HIV-infected children and as a transitional care facility leading to placement in the community. A human rights-based approach means that we recognize children as rights holders, rather than as mere recipients of services. We look for programs that offer leadership opportunities for children and initiatives that give children a voice in the decision-making processes that affect them. Peer support groups and peer-led AIDS awareness programs, as well as conferences in which children are valued panelists and presenters are a few examples. Firelight Foundation's initial focus was on children orphaned by AIDS, but we quickly realized two things that have further defined our grantmaking program. First of all, the need for intervention and assistance begins before the parent dies, as the financial strain and psychological trauma of living with and caring for a sick parent begins to impact heavily on the life of the child. The need for school tuition support; permanency planning and related legal aid advocacy; psychosocial services and activities such as counseling and memory books, typically offered within the context of home-based care programs, begins here. Secondly, community-based initiatives are usually designed to assist the most vulnerable children, many but not all of whom are AIDS orphans. To target funding solely on AIDS orphans can be to further stigmatize and isolate them, thus our grantmaking focus is upon children orphaned and affected by AIDS. We look to the local community to identify those children in greatest need. Why did your organization embark
on grantmaking in Africa? What was your internal process? Having come to this conclusion, I then questioned whether this was a realistic undertaking for a newly formed and relatively small family foundation. I attended the UN Conference on Children Orphaned by AIDS in December 1999, where I met Sandra Thurman who was then the Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. A follow-up meeting with her in Washington DC and with Karen Green and Rob Buchanan at the Council of Foundation's national headquarters convinced me that I wasn't totally out of my mind and further confirmed the urgency of the need for funders at all levels of the spectrum. From this point, things begin to move very quickly. Tammy Moody, our volunteer Program Director, came on board in March of 2000 and has done a tremendous job of launching and supporting a challenging first year of grantmaking. Our approach and direction has further been supported through a growing network with other funders working in Africa: The Global Fund for Women, Global Strategies for HIV Prevention, Pediatric AIDS Foundation's Call to Action, and Suzi Peel, formerly of Association François-Xavier Bagnoud (AFXB). This informal network, part of which has also served as the backbone of our advisory board, has been a critical source of information and mutual support. Our work has increasingly become a team effort as we have recently hired a part-time administrative assistant and a full-time Director, Jennifer Astone, who brings a background as a former Peace Corps volunteer and a foundation grants program officer for Africa to her role at Firelight. In retrospect, I have to say that we entered these waters somewhat naively. It has been a steep learning curve and an incredibly multi-faceted endeavor, but we have been reassured with each step that the networks and the resources are there to support this work. We have been in operation for barely a year and a half and we have awarded 48 grants supporting projects in the US and in nine countries of Africa: Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. I think one of the most important messages that Firelight Foundation has to share is that if we can do it, so can others. Some of the challenges
the Firelight Foundation encountered in developing and implementing
a program Given this as our target group, our first challenge was to get the word out to potential grantees that we existed and that we were interested in supporting their work. Thank God for the timing of the International AIDS Conference in Durban. Our Program Director, Tammy Moody attended the Conference and went on site visits in Zambia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa. Thanks to this whirlwind tour, a beginning network of projects and "eyes on the ground" [people who know the local situation and are knowledgeable about the programmatic issues] was established much more quickly than would otherwise have been possible. Our contacts at other foundations also became an important source of information and referred proposals. These initial networks have been essential to getting dollars out the door and into the hands of worthy grantees. We are examining ways that Firelight Foundation can support the quality of the proposals coming in. We are adapting our application to include more targeted questions that will better enable us to evaluate the potential grantee's match with our selection criteria. As our number of grantees grows, we would also like to be able to address the need for providing community-based groups with technical assistance in proposal writing. A related challenge for Firelight has been creating a grantmaking program that is user friendly. The last thing we want is an application and granting process that is so cumbersome, it prevents the very projects we are most interested in funding from coming to the door. At the same time, we want to be responsible in our granting and monitoring. This is a tricky balance. We are currently awarding grants across a range of categories. Some of our grantees can be funded through domestic organizations. Other grantees have been able to provide the documentation needed to establish equivalency and about one-third of our grantees are expenditure responsibility grants. The challenge here is to remain flexible and responsive to the varying needs and organizational capacities of our grantees. A third and major challenge that Firelight Foundation shares with
many other funders is how we can address the needs of the growing
number of children orphaned and affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa in
an increasingly strategic and sustainable way. There is no question
that this is a problem that is going to be with us for quite some
time. Even if the number of new infections were to drop to zero
today, the disease's long incubation period means that mortality
rates would not even begin to plateau until 2020. The most critical
challenge currently facing any organization seeking to assist HIV/AIDS
affected children is to develop responses that measure up to the
enormous scale of the crisis. What does the future hold?
From your experience, what are the two or three key things that
you have learned so far? In our outreach to the public and to potential donors, we have found that a sense of helplessness and hopelessness prevails. And while it is true that the statistics, are dire almost beyond belief, there are numerous avenues for action and assistance, and this is a message that needs to be delivered to the American public. In the coming months, Firelight will be seeking ways to join other Africa grantmakers in the effort to promote awareness, hope, and action. Together, we have an important story to tell. In the short time that Firelight Foundation has been in operation, we have learned that small amounts of money put into the right hands can go far. We have been impressed by the individual dedication and rallying of resources that underlie community-based programs supporting vulnerable children. We have a lot to learn from these grantees, and they have a lot to learn from each other. On a very small scale, Firelight Foundation has already linked several groups doing or wanting to do similar work and the results have been encouraging. For example, we funded two counselors from the Fountain of Hope's children's center in Lusaka, Zambia to visit the Girl-Child Network in Harare, Zimbabwe and to share their approach to sexual abuse prevention and treatment. The Fountain of Hope was inspired to follow in the footsteps of the Girl-Child Network, adapting it to their setting and planning the opening of a safe house for girls. The lesson learned through this experience is a value-added one. We need to think strategically and beyond the straightforward boundaries of grantmaking. Linking groups and fostering partnerships, for example, can provide an invaluable service to groups operating in isolation. Sometimes it is as simple as letting a group that is working hard within their local community know that there is somebody out there who cares. When we talk about the need for scaling up, we need to consider that there are multiple approaches to replication and expansion, with different issues to consider depending on the approach. For our part, Firelight Foundation is interested in exploring and supporting opportunities for capacity building that begin at the community level, from the bottom-up and from community to community. We have learned that this is a complex process, and that giving too much money too soon can exceed the absorptive capacity of an organization and may in fact undermine its effectiveness. It all comes back to the point made earlier regarding the importance of flexibility and sensitivity to the individual contexts and the varying needs of the organizations that we are working with. Finally, we have realized that as grantmakers working in Africa, we have a lot to learn from each other. The need is great and there is room for everyone at the table. Firelight Foundation is most interested in convening with other Africa grantmakers who are funding programs to support children orphaned and affected by HIV/AIDS and it is one of the reasons we are so grateful to be here today. We could be so much more effective in our actions through strategic collaboration and we look forward to future opportunities to work together on behalf of the children. Relevant articles and current statistics can be found on the CABA (Children Affected by AIDS) web site http://www.synergyaids.com/caba. To join the discussion forum, email caba-request@forumone.com with the message "subscribe caba".
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