Objective: To create 20 new Modules at a cost of $150,000 each over three years to make 1600 families economically self-sufficient after three years, helping them to raise 8,000 children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Commitment: To make 1,600 families economically self-sufficient after three years, via a $3 million in-kind investment grant.

Background: Based on 15 years of work in the field, FXB has designed a low-cost, sustainable community-based Module in Uganda and Rwanda that has proven instrumental in helping families and communities to combat the effects of AIDS, to regain greater stability and self-sufficiency, and to raise a generation of AIDS orphans. Each Module provides up to 80 families in the communities we serve with a basic package of in-kind health, education, psychosocial and income-generating services.

The grants provided within each Module are called income-generating activities (IGAs). At the program’s onset, each beneficiary undertakes a project designed to generate income in accordance with his/her place of residence, abilities, and previous experience. FXB finances the project in two or three phases during the first year while the beneficiary drives the project, thus sustaining an income that will allow him/her to gradually meet the needs of his/her family. This is not a loan program, but rather an in-kind investment in community economic development. Beneficiaries are strongly encouraged to diversify their activities.

Examples of the types of businesses designed include: trading food stuffs and charcoal; running restaurants and refreshment booths; working in hair salons; operating second-hand clothing shops; creating sewing, stitching and basket-weaving workshops; cultivating vegetable gardens; and raising small livestock.

Staff for each Module includes one psychosocial worker, one person in charge of the income-generating activities (IGAs), and one driver-equipped vehicle to transport staff to the families in need. A Module can function independently or in tandem with others, in which case staff costs can be reduced somewhat as well as the cost of supplies we purchase to promote the IGAs.

Families living in the same neighbourhood or village are encouraged to work together to share experiences; to help one another through illness; to create a culture of solidarity while encouraging individual responsibility; and to learn to manage and develop a collective activity.

Each module is designed to last for three years, with costs decreasing after the initial year as basic materials for the IGAs are provided at the beginning of the program and families and communities become increasingly self-sustaining. As income generation proceeds, heads of households gain new resources to cover part of the costs of medical treatment and schooling. The cost of each Module over three years is about $150,000. The goal is to multiply the number of modules to serve as many families as possible.

By late June 2005, nine modules covering 720 families were operational in Rwanda. 4500 hundred people have benefited from this community-based multi-sector program. In beneficiary households, nutrition has improved, poverty has decreased, access to health care has increased, reintegration into the education system has been accomplished, and stigmatization has dramatically decreased.

Another dramatic achievement is the families’ increased capacity to form groups in which they jointly carry out income-generating activities. Once this occurs, groups become eligible for micro-credit, an option formerly unavailable. Over time, we have seen the daily income of these groups increase from a dollar or less a day to three or four dollars a day.

With a success rate of 85%, these modules act as a stabilizing force for their host communities and thus strengthen the national fabric as a whole. They are raising a generation of AIDS orphans and vulnerable children, pulling them out of poverty and through this one three-year investment achieving micro-poverty eradication.

Partnership Opportunity: FXB seeks $1.5 million in funding to create 10 community-based Modules in Uganda and Rwanda. Each Module provides up to 80 families with a basic package of in-kind health, education, psychosocial and income-generating services.

Update:
December 2005 (World AIDS Day):
Albina du Boisrouvray launched an effort to raise $1.5 million for 10 Modules of FXB grants. Fundraisers spent two weeks in Uganda and Rwanda examining and filming FXB model projects to document and thus better inform potential financers about ongoing efforts.

May 2006:
-Thus far, FXB has raised a little more than a third of the monies – about $1.035 million dollars.
-Several hundred thousand dollars have been sent to Rwanda to begin new Model Villages.
-In order to retain donors, cultivate new donors and increase FXB’s profile, FXB has planned social and educational opportunities including the recent “The Feminization of AIDS” discussion panel (the first of a series of four) at the Cosmopolitan Club in NYC on March 23rd and a private screening of the Oscar nominated film, Yesterday, at the Soho House in NYC on March 9, 2006. Special promotional literature has been produced and the FXB website has been designed to feature this campaign.