Retooling Health Services for Internal Refugees in South Sudan

Poktap refugee camp in South Sudan, where staff supported by the John Dau Foundation are now providing nutrition support and health care.

In 2014 there were almost 60 million refugees worldwide—more than at any time since detailed record keeping—according to a new report from the UN agency charged with helping refugees.

The report also finds that one-sixth of the world’s refugees—11 million—are people who have been displaced within their countries. Called internally displaced persons, or IDPs, these “internal refugees” often don’t make the news because their displacement doesn’t disrupt another country. But their suffering and need is just as great.
In South Sudan the John Dau Foundation, an Aid for Africa member, has seen its mission altered and refocused on internal refugees because of ongoing fighting in that country since December 2013. The Foundation has supported the Duk Lost Boys Clinic, which was started by “lost boy” and genocide survivor John Dau in 2007 to provide health care to the people of the area.


During the conflict, Duk County has suffered some of the worst fighting in the country, according to Daniel Pisegna, the Foundation’s executive director. The clinic was destroyed and the population scattered. UNHCR estimates there were 1.4 million internal refugees in the country in 2014.

“Although the clinic is no longer operational, we have been able to provide support in refugee camps,” said Pisegna. That support has focused on nutrition, particularly for children five years old and younger and pregnant and lactating women.
“This conflict brought South Sudan to the brink of a severe famine, so the nutrition situation has been dire,” he said.

At the Poktap camp, women and young children gather daily for nutrition monitoring and food rations.

The staff of 20 from the Duk clinic are now working in three refugee camps, some in partnership with UNICEF and USAID, monitoring nutrition as well as providing maternity and primary care for some 40,000 internal refugees.

Word of the medical and nutrition services available at the camps has spread, attracting individuals from both sides of what has become a civil war. But conflict has been minimal.
“We don’t see a lot of animosity,” Pisegna said. “There is an understanding that the war has been unfortunate for everyone.”

Meanwhile, the work continues. Pisegna said that during the last nine months at the Poktap refugee camp, severe malnutrition has been reduced from 25 percent to 1 percent in children under five.
For the next six months, rain will make the camps unreachable by road. Supplies have been brought in and staff are in place to keep the health and nutrition programs in focus and ongoing

Will Ending Trophy Hunting Save Africa’s Lions?

Cecil was illegally killed in a trophy hunt gone wrong in Zimbabwe.

The illegal killing in Zimbabwe of Cecil, a lion that was protected and was the subject of a research study, has drawn international attention to wildlife trophy hunting in Africa. Outrage about how Cecil died has led to questions about the larger problem of wildlife conservation in Africa, specifically the decline in Africa’s lion populations.

Speaking on CNN International, Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, an Aid for Africa member working to ensure the future of wild cats through scientific leadership and global conservation action, said that wildlife trophy hunting is used in a number of African countries to help generate funding for conservation.
Wildlife conservation requires “massive resources” that African countries have difficulty generating, he said. “Zimbabwe uses legal trophy hunting to put money back into conversation.”
Hunter said that Zimbabwe does a “pretty good job” of managing trophy hunting and that he believed this illegal hunt was an “outlier.”

Lion populations in Africa are in overall decline in all but a few African countries, according to Hunter.  But trophy hunting is not the reason lions and other cats are declining in Africa. Lions are disappearing because of human encroachment into lion habitats and actions by rural African pastoralists who kill lions to protect their livestock.

“In Africa the huge challenge we face is a rapidly growing human population, a large percentage of which relies on livestock for their livelihoods,” Hunter said.
Hunter said it is up to the international community to help fund the African wildlife organizations that are charged with protecting lions and other wildlife.  Although we may find trophy hunting distasteful, he said, African governments need the funding that legal trophy hunting brings.

“There are solutions,” Hunter said.  He described Panthera programs that employ local people to monitor lion activity in order to protect livestock. The programs provide tools and techniques that help reduce conflict between lions and people.  Panthera provides training and equipment for lion monitoring and helps pastoralists build fortified corrals to protect livestock at night. “We reduce the issues from the beginning and also to provide incentives (to protect wildlife),” he said.

“This situation has shown how much people care,” Hunter said. The next step is to support African governments and the people of Africa to better manage wildlife.
Learn more about Panthera’s work to research and save African lions and its innovative solution to save leopards in South Africa

Two African Women Beat the Education Odds

Ageta Ayako grew up in one of the poorest sections of Nairobi, Kenya. She is the first in her family to graduate from university.

It’s back to a new school year for children throughout much of the world this month. In many countries in Africa, students lucky enough to attend school are in the middle of their academic year or have recently graduated. Ageta Ayako is one of the lucky ones. She graduated with honors earlier this summer from a Kenyan university. Another is Barikisu Muntari-Sumara, who graduated in late June from Ashesi University in Ghana.
Both women beat the odds.
A 2015 report by UNESCO provides the latest look at school enrollments and education levels throughout the world as of 2012. Although world student enrollments increased overall in the dozen years covered, enrollment rates in Sub Saharan Africa remained disappointing.


Thirty million primary-school-age children in Sub Saharan Africa were not enrolled in school in 2012. This represented half of all the children not enrolled in primary school throughout the world, according to UNESCO, the United Nations agency focused on education, science and culture.

The report notes that the world’s poorest children are four times more likely not to attend school than the world’s richest children. If they do go to school, they are five times more likely to drop out before finishing. It also finds that most countries in Sub Saharan Africa failed to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education during the review period.

Barikisu Muntari-Sumara, who resisted pressure to marry at 13, graduated with a degree in Business Administration from Ashesi University in Ghana.

These numbers highlight why Ageta and Barikisu’s success stories are so remarkable.
Ageta grew up in the slums of Nairobi and attended St. Philips Primary School, which receives support from African Childrens Haven, an Aid for Africa member. Ageta received scholarships to attend high school. When she earned admission to a Kenyan university, she took out loans to finance her studies. Today she has a Bachelor of Science degree in Food Technology.

Barikisu resisted being married off at age 13. She became a street hawker to pay for high school and then received a scholarship to attend Ashesi University in Ghana. Ashesi University Foundation is an Aid for Africa member. Barikisu graduated with a degree in Business Administration.
Aid for Africa and its member organizations believe that education is key to Africa’s future. More than 60 of our 85 members include education in their missions. Two dozen provide scholarships to students—half of them exclusively to girls and young women.

Despite obstacles of poverty and gender, Ageta and Barikisu are university graduates. Their astonishing stories underscore the importance of supporting education in Sub Saharan Africa and the need to reduce the odds of students achieving their educational dreams.
Learn more about our member organizations that support education in Sub Saharan Africa. Learn more about the importance of educating girls in Africa

Aid for Africa Scholar Tracks Community-Led Nutrition and Health Efforts in Rwanda and Kenya

Nutrition centers in Gicumbi, Rwanda, provide a meeting place for mothers to learn about nutrition and child care.

This past summer Dianna Bartone, the fourth Aid for Africa Endowed Scholar, traveled to Gicumbi, Rwanda, and Nairobi, Kenya, as part of her graduate work in nutrition and public health at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Bartone undertook this work with support from the Aid for Africa Endowment for Food and Sustainable Agriculture, a partnership between Tufts University’s Friedman School and Aid for Africa. The Aid for Africa Endowment provides a Friedman graduate student with funding to help defray the costs of research in Africa each year.

In Rwanda, where almost 40 percent of children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, Bartone observed and documented the activities of village-based child nutrition centers in the Gicumbi region, which is  north of the capital, Kigali. The centers, which are run by local women, are a cross between community kitchens and day care centers for children under five.


Mothers bring their children to the centers along with food to share. The women learn from each other about hygiene, food preparation, nutrition and more, according to Bartone. Children receive a variety of foods that improve their diets. Some centers include vocational training for women. The centers serve multiple goals, including improved child nutrition and women’s empowerment, Bartone said.

“They [the centers] are community run and sustainable, which is exciting,” she said. “Women will hear about a center and visit it to see what is happening, then go back to their villages and replicate it.”

Dianna Bartone and Rwandan colleague.

Bartone said that the first center was launched in 2012. There are 13 centers in the region today.
Bartone shifted gears in Kenya, where the Kenyan government is working to decentralize health services throughout the country. According to Bartone, Kenyan health officials understand that community health advocacy organizations can be instrumental in disseminating public health information, particularly about sexual and reproductive health.

Bartone spent four weeks learning “who is doing what” and how health advocacy organizations already active in the country are coordinating with each other, or, in some cases, not coordinating.
To determine the gaps in effectiveness of these organizations, Bartone conducted interviews with key players in the communities. She found that issues like maternal health and HIV/AIDS were receiving attention, while family planning, general counseling, gender rights, sexual abuse and violence were not. Bartone found a consensus for the establishment of a legally based, government-sanctioned health advocacy network to ensure health initiatives are focused on need.

Bartone worked under the auspices of World Vision in conjunction with Rwandan and Kenyan staff. At Tufts, she is working to complete master’s degrees in human nutrition and public health.
Aid for Africa, which believes that development should be research-driven, created the Aid for Africa Endowment at Tufts University to support scientific research on the ground in Africa

From Education to Heath Care: Grassroots Partnerships are Changing Development in Africa

Construction of the new health clinic in Bududa, Uganda, which will serve the people of five additional communities.

Members of the Aid for Africa alliance believe that good works grow through partnerships. One long-term partnership is between Aid for Africa members Arlington Academy of Hope (AAH) and Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC).

After building a life in Arlington, Virginia, Ugandan immigrant John Wanda wanted to build something else — a school for his native village of Bumwalukani. Having come to the U.S. with their daughters, John and his wife decided to bring to Uganda the education principles of their daughters’ Arlington school. With the help of supporters through their U.S. charity, the Wandas did just that. Today, the village elementary school they envisioned ranks in the top 1 percent of some 19,000 schools in Uganda and is a model for the rest country. AAH also supports 600 elementary, high school and university students.


But education requires more than reading, writing and arithmetic. When the school began, it soon became apparent that the students needed health services and a health clinic. That’s when the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children, or FIMRC, joined the effort.

FIMRC’s mission is to build clinics and provide community outreach and preventative health education programs in developing countries. They were invited to Bumwalukani to built a clinic to support the students. FIMRC staff also trained community health educators and provided volunteers to staff the clinic. Those efforts led to expansion of services to the families of students and then to the community at large.

In recent years, demand for clinic services began to outstrip capacity. The clinic provided services to 14,000 people last year, according to Meredith Welsh, FIMRC’s executive director. “But we didn’t have enough space or the ability to expand on the current property,” she said.
To meet the demand, FIMRC recently began construction of a larger clinic about one mile away from AAH’s school.

“We were fortunate to have land donated for our more expansive clinic,” said Welsh. She said that the new clinic will provide more services, including 24-hour care, maternity facilities, consultation rooms, and a separate area for patients with infectious diseases. Providing health services to the students of the school will also remain a priority, according to Welsh.

The new clinic has expanded the partnership between AAH and FIMRC to include the Ugandan government and funding from the 30/30 Project, Construction for Change and T-Mobile. Once completed, services will be phased in slowly to ensure sustainability. Welsh says the clinic will serve more than three times as many people as the original clinic.
This grassroots partnership is changing development in rural Uganda

New Partnership Turns Men’s Accessory into Support for Africa

Bows-N-Ties has created a series of pocket squares based on African flags. All sales will benefit Aid for Africa.

Originally conceived as an accessory for well-dressed men, the pocket square is now helping to empower women, children and families in Sub Saharan Africa. San Francisco-based Bows-N-Ties has created a limited-edition series of African flag pocket squares and is donating the proceeds from the sale of the squares to Aid for Africa.

The collection includes designs based on the flags of twelve African countries—Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa and Tanzania.
“It’s a collection that not only looks good, but literally does good,” said Hendrik Pohl, CEO of Bows-N-Ties. One hundred percent of the purchase price will benefit Aid for Africa.
How does a unique men’s accessory become a fundraising tool?
“In the past we created special collections to support veterans and animal causes, Pohl said. “This year we turned our attention to Africa.”

Although based on the flag of an African country, each pocket square design is unique. Pohl said that the company has produced only 200 of each design and will sell them for $10 each.
“If the charitable cause isn’t motivation enough to start wearing one of these 12 pocket squares, then perhaps the fact that wearing the pocket square will literally make you look better is reason to invest in one of these menswear accessories. Either way, wearing them will make you look good,” said Pohl.

Barbara Alison Rose, Aid for Africa’s executive director, said that the partnership with Bows-N-Ties will help raise awareness about the development challenges in Sub Saharan Africa and the important grassroots solutions in education, health care, economic development, agriculture, environmental protection and wildlife conservation that are meeting these challenges.
“We are thrilled to be part of an effort that will help others learn about and support efforts to empower women, children and families in Africa,” she said

Boosting Wildlife Conservation with Technology

Google Street View of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya.

Love elephants, lions and giraffes but don’t have the time or money to take an African safari? Today is your lucky day! Google and Aid for Africa member Lewa Wildlife Conservancy have teamed up so you can take an African safari right now—virtually!

Using Google’s Street View you can visit Lewa’s Kenyan reserve and follow elephants, endangered Grevy’s zebra and more in real time. You can traverse the African savanna in Kenya without having to leave your computer. By connecting you with wildlife where it lives, Lewa and other wildlife conservation groups hope you will increase your awareness and take action on behalf of wildlife.

The Google-Lewa partnership is new, but the concept of technology and wildlife conservation is not. Scientists have been using technology such as radio collars to monitor and protect wildlife for decades. But traditional radio collars, which have to be used with hand held receivers often in close proximity to the animals are not always the best tools for researching wildlife.

Technology is critical to protecting the 400 elephants remaining in Virunga National Park in the DRC.

Today, smartphone tools, GPS and other technology are part of the conservation tool kit. A combination of technologies is being used to track a dwindling heard of elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo with support from Aid for Africa member Wildlife Conservation Network.

During the 1980s there were some 8,000 elephants in the DRC’s Virunga National Park. Today only 400 elephants remain. Understanding where these elephants live and range will be critical to their survival. Kenyan-based Save the Elephants, which receives funding from Wildlife Conservation Network, has pioneered methods that track elephants in real time using Google Earth and GPS technology. This tracking is gaining effectiveness and serves as a vital tool in planning where to send patrols to guard elephants.

Recently, scientists began using accelerometers to protect elephants. Like their larger predecessors, the small, less expensive accelerometer devices developed for smartphones detect motion using g-forces. When used to monitor elephant movement and body orientation, they can signal when elephants are under attack.
In the future, drones may become another tool to monitor and protect wildlife. These controversial and expensive unmanned aircraft have the potential to provide rangers on the ground with information about wildlife location, migration and poaching.

With wildlife poaching on the rise throughout Sub Saharan Africa, particularly of elephants and rhino, technologies are needed to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated poaching operations. Google Street View allows anyone with a computer to experience elephants and other African wildlife in real time and perhaps spark a commitment to supporting ongoing wildlife conservation efforts and the development of new technologies for the future

A Massive Drought in Ethiopia Again?

Ethiopia is experiencing its worst drought since the 1960s. Photo credit: AddisAbabaOnline

It sounds so familiar—drought in Ethiopia puts millions of people at risk of starvation. How could this be when in recent years Ethiopia was lauded as a country on the rise–one of the bright spots in Sub Saharan Africa? After all, Ethiopia has experienced economic growth of 10 percent in recent years. How can millions be at risk of starvation again and what can be done?

Those who are old enough to remember the Live Aid concert in 1985, which raised millions of dollars to provide food to starving Ethiopians, might be thinking we had solved the problem of famine, particularly in Ethiopia.
But this drought is different–experts say it is the worst Ethiopian drought since the 1960s. Its severity stems from this year’s El Niño, which is shifting rain patterns, causing massive drought in some areas and unusually heavy rains elsewhere.


Despite Ethiopia’s  strong economic growth, 80 percent of its population subsists on rain-fed agriculture. French media report that crop production in regions such as Afar and Tigray has dropped by 50 to 90 percent in some parts and failed completely in others. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of livestock have already been lost.

In the 1980s, one million Ethiopians died of starvation from a drought that was exacerbated by political upheaval in the county’s northern region. Today, circumstances are different, but the outcome may not be.  At the end of 2015, 8.2 million Ethiopians were in need of food assistance. Aid agencies predict that the number could almost double to 15 million in 2016.

Ethiopia’s current government amassed food stocks and created early warning systems to deal with drought. But the magnitude of this drought was unforeseen. Experts estimate that Ethiopia will need up to $1.4 billion to cope. Although the Ethiopian government has committed almost $200 million and the international community another $170 million, much more is needed.

With world attention focused on Syria, the Middle East and the Zika virus in the Americas, the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia has been largely overlooked.
The Ethiopian government as well as international aid organizations and local nonprofits on the ground in Ethiopia are scrambling to save lives. One organization, A Glimmer of Hope Foundation, an Aid for Africa member, is supporting a feeding program for children in need.

A Glimmer of Hope is targeting the 400,000 children who are malnourished as the result of the drought. Along with their Ethiopian partner organizations, they are funding emergency food efforts to provide life-sustaining grain through schools. The first $250,000 has already been spent. It is now working to double these efforts. Details about how you can help can be found here.

Finally, word is beginning to spread about the crisis in Ethiopia and what is needed. The mechanisms are in place to deal with it. Now all that is needed is the financial commitment

African Moms Escape Poverty with their Children in Tow

Daate Inyakh is now running her own shop thanks to a business grant from BOMA Project.

As the sole provider for her family, Daate Inyakh of northern Kenya once struggled to feed her six daughters. She was one of the ultra-poor women living in drought-threatened arid areas who believed she would never leave her life of poverty. But since September 2014, when she received a business grant and training from The BOMA Project, an Aid for Africa member, Inyakh’s children have never slept hungry again.
Inyakh and her business partners now run a small duka, or shop, in Logologo, Kenya. In her free time she attends adult education classes to learn how to read and write. Her dream is for all six of her daughters to complete school and get good jobs.

“One thing I like about BOMA,” said Inyakh, “is that it has empowered us with knowledge. This has been an eye-opening experience for me – I never knew I was capable of running a business and now I am excelling.”
The women with whom BOMA works live at or below the poverty line, which is $2.50 a day. Most of them–88 percent–earn less than $1.25 a day and live in extreme poverty.

The BOMA Project’s approach to ending extreme poverty is transformative: Upon exiting BOMA’s two-year program, BOMA participants report a 90 percent increase in household spending on food, a 132 percent increase on education, and a 195 percent increase on medical care.

BOMA is one of four nonprofits worldwide to pass a rigorous “impact audit” conducted by ImpactMatters, a new organization led by Yale economist Dean Karlan, founded with the goal of helping donors identify nonprofits that offer the best return on charitable dollars. ImpactMatters assesses nonprofits in four key areas: cost-effectiveness, transparency, knowledge sharing, and “theory of change,” or how well the organization accomplishes its mission.

Since 2009, BOMA has lifted more than 56,000 women and children out of extreme poverty, launched almost 3,000 small businesses, and established more than 500 savings group. BOMA’s goal is to double the number of women and children lifted out of extreme poverty to 100,000 by 2018.
No doubt Daate Inyakh will be cheering BOMA on

Maasai Woman Beats Odds to Attend Medical School

Gloria Kotente Mumeita, a medical student at the University of Nairobi, traveled to the U.S. for an 8-week internship thanks to the Maasai Girls Education Fund.

Aid for Africa has identified the education of girls and women as a key objective of our mission.  Educate a woman and you educate a nation, so the African saying goes.  We agree.  Over the years, we have supported girls and young women, who otherwise would have been unable to attend school, enroll in school, stay in school and thrive. Aid for Africa’s members have supported thousands of girls in elementary and high school and hundreds in college, technical school and beyond.

When girls in Africa receive an education and earn income, they spend 90 percent of their earnings on their families. When an African girl goes to school for seven or more years, she marries four years later on average than she otherwise would, and she has fewer children than she otherwise would. The children she does have are more likely to be healthy and survive past the age of five.
Members of the Aid for Africa family were fortunate recently to meet  one of the exceptional women who has benefited from support through an Aid for Africa member.

Gloria Kotente Mumeita, now in her final year of medical school at the University of Nairobi, traveled to the United States for an 8-week internship at Suburban Hospital and the National Institutes of Health, both in Bethesda, Maryland. Mumeita’s medical school support has been provided by the Maasai Girls Education Fund, an Aid for Africa member.
Not only was Mumeita’s journey to the U.S. extraordinary, so are her accomplishments.  A member of the Maasai tribe, she is only the second Maasai woman from her district to go to medical school and the third Maasai woman in Kenya to become a doctor.

In Kenya, fewer than half of all Maasai girls complete primary school and fewer than 10 percent go on to high school, according to the Maasai Girls Education Fund. Tradition would have had Mumeita share the fate of most Maasai girls under the age of 15. She would have been married to an older man in exchange for a few cows worth about what the family earns in a year–less than $500.

But Mumeita was fortunate. Her family wanted a better life for her. With their support and support for medical school tuition from the Maasai Girls Education Fund, her future will be better, indeed.  Her path to medical school wasn’t easy. In her class of 320, she is one of three Maasai, and the only Maasai woman. “When I look back I can’t believe I got to medical school,” she says.

Mumeita’s success will ripple through the Maasai community. When she completes her training, she will return to her community as a medical doctor says Tracey Pyles, president of Maasai Girls Education Fund. “She will serve her community and be a role model to other Maasai girls and their families.

Charity: Water Ratchets Up Technology for Water Project Results and Transparency

Salem, who is featured in charity: water’s VR documentary, watches her father use VR goggles in Ethiopia. Photo credit: Scott Harrison

Since its inception, charity: water, an Aid for Africa member, has made transparency to its donors of paramount importance. Donors receive photos and GPS coordinates of water projects they help fund along with stories from the field.

But charity: water’s founder Scott Harrison wanted to do more.  He wanted to ensure that the wells the organization drills continue to produce clean water long after the drilling equipment is removed, and he wanted to provide donors with a higher level of transparency.

In 2012 charity: water won a $5 million technology grant from Google.org to develop a sensor that would do just that. Sensors would monitor and transmit data on water flow from charity: water’s pumps, allowing for quick repair or replacement when the flow changed. The sensors would provide a solution to an ongoing problem associated with many development projects—ensuring sustainability over the long run.


The sensor data would also be shared with donors, who would receive information about the performance of the wells they funded. Ultimately, charity: water hoped that donors would be able to access the data themselves, according to the organization’s chief global water officer Christoph Gorder.

charity: water worked with PCH, a custom-design manufacturing company, to create the sensor, which transmits data through SIM cards and cell phone networks to the cloud. By the end of 2015, about one-third of the 3,500 sensors planned for pumps in rural Ethiopia had been installed. According to charity: water, sensors “learn” what is normal well and pump function and immediately report when water flow changes.
As charity: water worked to develop the sensor technology, Harrison began to explore virtual-reality technology as a tool for donors to experience life in the communities the organization serves.  At the charity: water’s annual gala in December, the organization released The Source—an eight-minute virtual-reality documentary about bringing clean water to a community in northern Ethiopia and how it changed the life of a teenage girl.
Films using virtual technology will help donors experience—almost first-hand—the impact of projects they support. With this experience, donors may better understand—and perhaps feel—the power of providing clean water.

The words tech savvy and charity are not often used in the same sentence. charity: water is changing that through innovative technologies that provide millions of people with sustainable access to clean water, monitor the results of water projects, and capture the reality of life before and after clean water

Empowering Women Artisans In Africa: It’s Not Just a Basket

A sisal plateau basket made by a Rwandan artisan who received training through Aid for Africa member Indego Africa.

It looks like a basket—a beautiful blue basket.  But don’t be fooled–it’s food, electricity and school fees for a family in Rwanda.  It’s a mother’s hope for her children’s future.

What started with a simple idea—empower women who had survived Rwanda’s genocide to use their artisan skills to make a living and support their families—has become an empowerment program that puts women in charge of their own lives. Oh, yes, and enables them to provide for their families.

Following the Rwandan genocide, the country’s population was 70 percent female and its economy was in shambles. Women were left to rebuild the country, yet most lacked formal education and although they produced unique handicrafts, they struggled to gain access to international export markets. They were producing beautiful items, including sisal peace baskets and animal horn jewelry, but their products were sold primarily to the tourist trade in Rwanda.

In 2007 Aid for Africa member Indego Africa began working with 22 women from Rwandan cooperatives. The women were talented artisans, but they didn’t know how to build and expand their businesses or how to reach and compete in international markets. They needed to understand business cycles, their customers and quality control.


Indego Africa focused on providing artisans with access to markets, vocational training and education. The organization worked with the artisans to improve their technical skills and to teach them basic business skills.
Today some 800 women working in 25 artisan groups throughout Rwanda provide international boutiques and designers with a steady stream of quality products thanks to Indego Africa.

Mavis of Ghana sells her bolga baskets through Indego Africa and now is able to send her children to school.

Rwandan women artisans have taken their traditional skills and new knowledge to create “unique, beautiful items that appeal to the modern design-driven consumer,” according to Haley Donor, Indego Africa’s development and communications manager.

“We started out as a handicraft company, we are now providing products for Nordstrom, ABC Home, and Shopbop.com,” Donor said.

These items are also sold through Indego Africa’s online catalog.  All profits from sales are used to fund the organization’s ongoing artisan education and training programs.

This year the organization expanded their economic empowerment and education program to Ghana, West Africa, where in the poorest areas women earn less than 50 cents a day, according to Donor.  As in Rwanda, artisans produce a range of unique items that include kente cloth, rustic bolga straw baskets and handmade ceramic beads.

Indego Africa’s expansion into Ghana currently focuses on about 35 women artisans who are turning their passion for creating traditional products into futures for their children.  Mavis, who lives in the Kusami area, is one of them.

“. . . I want both my children to have a good education. With education, they can get good jobs, become leaders in society, and prosper in the world,” she said.
Mavis’s bolga baskets are not just baskets, they are her children’s future

Board of Directors

Dianna Bartone

Dianna Bartone is a graduate student at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition and a candidate for Master Degrees in Human Nutrition and Public Health in Global Health. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Notre Dame. She has worked as a researcher and teaching assistant at both universities. She is the fourth Aid for Africa Scholar for Food and Sustainable Agriculture.

 The Aid for Africa Endowment for Food and Sustainable Agriculture supports graduate students undertaking research in Sub Saharan Africa on how agriculture and nutrition can improve food security and reduce poverty. As an Aid for Africa Scholar, Dianna worked in Gicumbi, Rwanda, where she studied the activities and nutrition of children under the age of two at village-based child nutrition centers run by local women. She also studied community health advocacy organizations in Nairobi, Kenya, to determine their efficacy of disseminating public health information about sexual and reproductive health.

Geralynn Batista

Geralynn Batista, an international economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Department of Treasury, has been a champion of social and economic development throughout her career. Prior to joining the Treasury, Ms. Batista was a strategist with the global finance firm Lehman Brothers. She also served as a development associate at Leake and Watts Services Inc., one of the largest full service childcare agencies in the United States, where she helped create a pioneering program for children and families with AIDS in the foster care system.

These programs are currently being replicated in a number of African countries. Ms. Batista worked in Europe with the world’s leading non-profit organization focused on agricultural issues and plant biodiversity, researching species eradication and biodiversity loss in Africa and Latin America. As an associate with Future Harvest, she created programs focused on food, nutrition, and agricultural development in Africa and other parts of the developing world and their links to peace, health, environmental renewal, economic growth, and population growth. Ms. Batista holds a Doctorate degree in Economics from Fordham University and Masters and undergraduate degrees in International Relations from American University.

Barbara Alison Rose

Executive Director and Board Member, ex officio
Barbara Alison Rose has been involved with the issues facing Africa for her entire professional life. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Ms. Rose worked in rural Ethiopia and traveled extensively throughout the continent. Ms. Rose was the founding executive director of Future Harvest—a nonprofit organization dedicated to building awareness of the importance of science for food production, the environment, and the world’s poor.

During her tenure at Future Harvest, Ms. Rose developed an outreach strategy that used the voices of world leaders, the messages of respected scholarly institutions, and the power of the internet to raise awareness around the world of the importance of food production and the role of agricultural science in meeting the needs of Africa and the rest of the developing world. Ms. Rose directed the communications department of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)—an organization focused on improving food and nutrition through better policies for food production and distribution, with a focus on Africa.

Ms. Rose has worked as an independent consultant for nonprofits, with a primary emphasis on assisting her clients in communicating their programs to the general public. Ms. Rose serves on the Board of Trustees of EcoAgricultural Partners, an environmental nonprofit organization. She received an MBA from Columbia University, a MA in Journalism with a focus on African studies from the University of Maryland, and a BA from Hood College.

Edward W. Sulzberger

Ed Sulzberger is an international fund raising and public awareness expert specializing in research and development issues for developing countries. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Mr. Sulzberger has spent nearly three decades working with public sector agencies and non-profit organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Mr. Sulzberger has worked with students, researchers, farmers, and development officials throughout the developing world. He lived and worked in Nigeria in the 1970s, serving as an adviser to Nigeria’s Federal Department of Agriculture.
Mr. Sulzberger has written widely on issues such as AIDS, agricultural biodiversity, and food production. He has worked extensively with the Consultative Group on International Research. He works and travels throughout Africa and is currently engaged in climate change projects involving smallholder farmers and projects for African AIDS orphans. Mr. Sulzberger earned a bachelors degree from Emerson College and holds a Masters in Corporate and Political Communications from Fairfield University. He is based in Galveston, Texas.

Jean-Claude Tchatchouang

Jean-Claude Tchatchouang, an economist, has served as senior advisor at the World Bank for more than ten years. This work has included a focus on more than twenty countries in Sub Saharan Africa. Trained as an economist in his native Cameroon and the United States, Mr. Tchatchouang also worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and served for ten years as the division chief at the Central Bank of the Central African States (BEAC). Mr. Tchatchouang also served for a dozen years with the Mitchell Group, a Washington D.C.-based firm providing development assistance support to governments and other organizations working in Africa and around the world. He is the author of a number books and articles on economics and finance. Mr. Tchatchouang received a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon, and a Masters degree in International Economic and Finance from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.

Emeritus
Chinwe M. Diké

The late Chinwe Diké, a founding member of the Aid for Africa board, played a leading role in guiding the organization’s development during its early years of operation. A lawyer by training, Ms. Diké served most recently as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in The Gambia.

 An expert in international banking, corporate and municipal financing and economic development, she spent more than two decades working to improve the lives of the world’s poor and worked tirelessly to develop programs focused on HIV/AIDS, poverty reduction, governance, and environmental sustainability. Her commitment to African development contributed greatly to her many professional commitments and to her work on the Aid for Africa board. Prior to joining the United Nations she served as was Deputy Counsel for the City of New York, Office of Management and Budget, and served as staff counsel to Barclays and Chase Manhattan banks. She held law degrees from Harvard and Cambridge Universities and an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College

Who We Are

Aid for Africa is a charity alliance of U.S.-based nonprofits and their African partners working to help children, families, and communities throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Aid for Africa members are all dedicated to solving the complex, inter-related challenges facing Africa. Our members realize that, as effective as they each are on their own, they can be even more powerful when they approach Africa’s issues as a group.

Together our members, with their partners on the ground in Africa, touch almost every aspect of the African community. Whether they are collecting and distributing books to school children, introducing medical strategies to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, or identifying and supporting women’s micro-enterprise projects, Aid for Africa’s members have one thing in common—a passionate desire to help the people of Africa solve critical problems and build a better future for their children and communities.

Organizations wishing to become part of the Aid for Africa partnership must meet stringent tests of fiscal accountability, governance and programmatic impact. For more information on our eligibility requirements, please visit our Member Services/Eligibility page.
If you would like to support the work of Aid for Africa, please make an online donation or visit our Other Ways to Give page.

South Africa Partners

 

Helps improve healthcare, education, and economic development in South Africa through partnerships with local communities and organizations. Focuses on the most vulnerable--women and children.

South Africa Partners builds mutually beneficial partnerships between the United States and South Africa in the areas of health and education.

We believe that the shared experiences and social movements in South Africa and the United States offer common ground from which to forge lasting and productive programs that provide for mutual learning and bring our countries closer together.  Serving as a catalyst of innovative approaches, SA Partners links people, strengthens communities, promotes social justice and fosters leadership in both countries.





















Projects include:

• Help improve the educational quality of early childhood development programming in informal preschools through teacher training, nutritional improvement and access to books and other educational materials to ensure long-term sustainability.
• Assist primary schools in expanding their capacity through programs that advance the professional 

• development of teachers.
• Contribute to the development of libraries and literacy through the donation of thousands of high quality children’s books.
• Support efforts to improve health services through partnerships that strengthen human resources capacity in the health system through executive level training of health leaders and managers, promote international research collaborations, and help hospitals gain access to important technologies.
• Train more than 200,000 people living with HIV to live positively and stay healthy.
• Serve as technical consultant for the national scale-up of the Integrated Access to Care and Treatment Program, a national strategy for pre-antiretroviral treatment

Village Enterprise

 

Equips people living in extreme poverty in rural Kenya and Uganda to create sustainable businesses. Provides training, mentoring, savings/credit groups, and seed grants.

Village Enterprise’s unique and proven model gives hard-working people the opportunity to transform a small grant into a new business, a better standard of living, and hope for the future. It helps them develop business plans and launch and sustain small businesses, such as farming, animal husbandry, bicycle repair shops, vegetable stands or used clothing stores.

To date, Village Enterprise has launched more than 33,000 micro-enterprises in East Africa and permanently changed the lives of more than 700,000 people. Program evaluations have shown that after one year, 88 percent of new businesses created since 1987 with our help are still thriving, and after four years, 75 percent are still operating.

Proven Results

The most recent independent assessment of our work found that one Village Enterprise-assisted business supports the lives of 21 people. Each business is owned by 3 entrepreneurs and on average, each business owner supports 7 dependents.

• After the one-year graduation program, participants increased their standard of living by 35 percent.
• Food and nutrition: food consumption and security was enhanced by 178 percent and protein in diet increased 4 times.
• Business Savings: after 1 year, individuals saw a 200 percent increase in individual savings and $455 savings per business savings group.

World Hope International

 

Alleviates suffering and injustice in Africa and elsewhere through education, microfinance, and community health programs. Builds wells, provides HIV/AIDS education and orphan care, and works to prevent human trafficking.

 

World Hope International is a faith-based relief and development organization that works to alleviate suffering and injustice through education, enterprise, and community health.
We respond to some of the most compelling challenges of our world. For example:

•  

• In Sierra Leone, thousands of adults and children lost limbs in a brutal civil war. World Hope restored dignity, opportunity, and hope by providing prosthetic limbs for more than 3,000 people.
• In Liberia, after a brutal dictatorship left the country in shambles, people were desperate for ways to provide for themselves and their children. World Hope stepped in to lead the restoration of a microfinance program, which now provides opportunities to tens of thousands of people.

• Human trafficking, particularly in women and children, is modern day slavery. These individuals are forced into sexual slavery, domestic servitude, armed conflict, and begging networks, and are bought and sold for body parts. They suffer repeated rapes, beatings, forced abortions, and mental and physical abuse. Our anti-trafficking programs have provided emergency care for survivors of human trafficking, increased public awareness of the issue, and created anti-trafficking networks that link communities, law enforcement, and service providers.

Our programs are guided by four core values: transformation, empowerment, sustainability, and collaboration. We believe that for our programs to make a difference, local communities must be transformed, empowered to effect change, equipped to sustain the change, and engaged as partners. We focus on grassroots development, rather than U.S.-based development, and work to develop indigenous leadership and staffing.

Books For Africa

 

World's largest organization working to end the book famine in Africa. Collects, sorts, ships, and distributes books to children, adults, libraries, and schools throughout Africa.

Children and adults in Africa are hungry to read, hungry to learn. Yet a severe book “famine” often stands in their way. Books For Africa aims to end that famine.

Since its founding in 1988, Books For Africa has shipped more than 27 million textbooks and library books to 48 African countries. In 2011 alone, we shipped more than 2.2 million books to 22 African countries valued at over $22 million. Books For Africa will ship to any location in Africa where a sponsor is ready to receive and distribute books.

For ten-year-old Ebrima, a Primary 4 student in The Gambia, books transformed his educational experience. Since Ebrima’s school in Banjul—Banjulinding Lower Basic—received a shipment of books from GambiaHELP in partnership with Books For Africa, his test scores have improved.  His teachers report the books motivated Ebrima to focus on his reading.  They said that since their arrival, books have “become his close friends.”

“Books For Africa is a simple idea, but its impact is transformative,” says Kofi Annan, former U.N. Secretary-General. “For us, literacy is quite simply the bridge from misery to hope

Generation Rwanda

Provides university scholarships to Rwandan orphans and socially vulnerable young people who will become Rwanda’s future leaders by promoting economic development and social reconciliation.

Generation Rwanda, formerly known as Orphans of Rwanda, is dedicated to helping orphans and other socially vulnerable young people in Rwanda pursue a university education and ultimately become leaders in driving economic development and social reconciliation. We currently support students who are united by a desire to create meaningful change in Rwanda’s economy and society.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide and the AIDS epidemic have produced the highest percentage of orphans in the world, with over 825,000 orphans in Rwanda–a country of 10 million people. Generation Rwanda aims to support the country’s development by enabling talented yet vulnerable young Rwandans to achieve their leadership potential. Our selection process is highly competitive.

Last year we received more than 4,000 applications from graduating students in rural schools and orphanages throughout rural Rwanda, and fewer than 1 percent were accepted into the program.
Of the students in our program, more than half have lost either both or one of their parents.

All of the students we support have overcome adversity and are driven to pursue their highest ambitions. During a student meeting in Kigali, one of our students said, “I have a dream that may sound more like a joke than a dream, but its craziness is matched by the depth with which I hold this dream in my heart. My goal is to be the best IT professional in Rwanda.” Given the historical exclusion of vulnerable Rwandans from attending university, such a statement would have once been outlandish; today, it is a concrete possibility

Arlington Academy of Hope

Provides education and healthcare to poor children in rural Uganda. Runs model school, supports 600 elementary, secondary, university students, and provides healthcare to a community of 10,000.

Arlington Academy of Hope (AAH) provides quality education and healthcare to children in rural Uganda. It runs a model elementary school for 340 children, provides secondary school scholarships to more than 280 students, and provides healthcare for more than 10,000 people annually. AAH also assists under resourced schools in the region to help improve their performance. It also helps local women start small businesses through microfinance loans.

AAH’s primary school has dedicated teachers who provide a well-rounded education and individual attention to the students.  The school ranks in the top 1 percent of some 19,000 schools in Uganda.  Schools in the district typically send an average of 14 percent of their students on to secondary school, but 100 percent of the graduates of AAH’s elementary school go on to secondary school.

AAH built a health clinic at the school for students and the local community. AAH opened a second clinic in Bupoto village, where it provides healthcare to thousands each year in an area in desperate need for basic services.

Founded by John and Joyce Wanda, who emigrating to the U.S. from Uganda more than a decade ago, AAH began as a way to bring the benefits of quality education to children in their native Ugandan villages. Today, the AAH is a symbol of what is possible in rural Africa and how people in the U.S. and elsewhere truly can make a difference, one child at a time

Volunteer

From time to time, Aid for Africa member organizations have positions, internships, and other opportunities for volunteers to work directly with them and the people they help.

Use the menus below to find volunteer opportunities either by country being served, an issue that is important to you (such as children, the arts, education), or by type of activity (such as administrative support, community outreach).
If you are looking for opportunities located in Africa, click on “by Activity” below and then select In-Country

Stand with Girls Pursuing Their Education

 

In Nigeria 276 girls remain missing after being abducted from their school by the terror group Boko Haram.

The girls were taken because they were pursuing their education – a reminder to us all of the many obstacles related to culture and tradition that girls in many parts of the world must overcome to improve their lives. 

As we pray for the girls’ safe return, we ask you to please stand with girls everywhere risking their lives to attend school. Please provide your email below

Nsukka (Enugu state) – Mr Isaiah Amariri, the Enugu State Controller of Nigeria Prisons Service, said on Thursday that six of the inmates that escaped from Nsukka Prisons on Tuesday night, have been re-arrested. Amariri, who gave the figure to newsmen in Nsukka, however declined to give the exact number of inmates that escaped from the prison. He said the prison service was liaising with security agents and community groups to apprehend the remaining escaped prisoners. “There was a jail break in Nsukka prisons on Tuesday night between 12pm and 3am, in which many inmates escaped, though six of them have been re-arrested. “I cannot give the exact figure for now as investigations are still on. “ We will send our findings to the Controller General of Prisons who will make public the exact number and cause of Nsukka prisons jail break. “The service is liaising with security agents and community vigilante groups to know the hideout of those still on the run in order to re-arrest them ,” he said. He assured that any official indicted the course of the investigation would be punished. “After investigations on the jail break, any person in the service found to have been involved or aided the Tuesday jail break will be arrested and prosecuted no matter his or her position. “Security has been beefed up in and around Nsukka prisons with serious surveillance on the prisons facilities, inmates and staff. “The prisons authorities are on top of the situation and will put measures in place to avoid a repeat of what happened on Tuesday night in Nsukka, “he said. The controller solicited the help of the general public who might have information on the whereabouts of the fleeing inmates, to report to relevant security agencies. “We solicit for help from the general public who may have information about the fleeing inmates to feel free and call prisons authorities or security agents to enable them re-arrest the escapees. “We promise that such information will be given the confidentiality it deserves and source identity will be fully protected, “he said. On the condition of the Nsukka prisons, Amariri said it was established a hundred years ago with the original capacity of 168 inmates, but currently harbours 264 prisoners. You May Like Jail break: How 15 inmates escaped Nsukka Prison - Vanguard News No female inmate was impregnated by prison officials - Prisons comptroller - Vanguard N… 'For six whole years, Mr. Jonathan was busy drinking, making merry' - Vanguard News Breaking News: New militant group fulfils threat, blows up pipeline in Delta - Vanguard News Army court-martials 20 soldiers for selling ammunition to terrorists, murder - Vanguard News 5 years after, Denrele opens up on why Charly Boy kissed him - Vanguard News How Is Atrial Fibrillation Treated ?Feedsmixer - Atrial Fibrillation Treatment Countdown To Divorce! Inside Kim & Kanye’s Troubled MarriageRadar Online 13 Stars Who Have Private PlanesZestVIP Top 20 Muscle Cars of All TimeCarophile Obamas To Move Into $6M MansionReuters TV The Only 2 Sites You Need to Know About When Building a WebsiteTop 10 Best Website Builders by Taboola Sponsored Links adekunle View all posts by adekunle → Previous Post Lawyers Lawyers express divergent views on 2016 NBA election Next Post Enhancing government revenue in time of economic recession You might also like Ejine Okoroafor shames Nicki Minaj’s cleavage Ejine Okoroafor shames Nicki Minaj’s cleavage Biafra: Jubilation in Enugu as Nnamdi Kanu regains freedom Biafra: Jubilation in Enugu as Nnamdi Kanu regains freedom In one operation, we made N90m: I built a house and bought one SUV before leaving for Japan In one operation, we made N90m: I built a house and bought one SUV before leaving for Japan My abductors asked for N100m, I offered N1bn My abductors asked for N100m, I offered N1bn I am looking for that man who can make me want sex every minute – Empress Sosanya I am looking for that man who can make me want sex every minute – Empress Sosanya 41 Boko Haram members beheaded in Biu 41 Boko Haram members beheaded in Biu Sexual Abuse: I didn't rape her, we had sex — Timaya Sexual Abuse: I didn't rape her, we had sex — Timaya Maheeda goes completely naked in Ikeja Maheeda goes completely naked in Ikeja Recommended by Disclaimer Comments expressed here do not reflect the opinions of vanguard newspapers or any employee thereof. 0 comments Livefyre Sign in 2 people listening

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