Skoll Foundation Awards $2.5 Million to mothers2mothers
Skoll Foundation Awards $2.5 Million to mothers2mothers
The Skoll Foundation has announced a $2.5 million grant to mothers2mothers in Cape Town, South Africa, in support of the organization's efforts to reduce the number of babies in developing nations born with HIV/AIDS.
Announced in conjunction with the International AIDS Society's Conference, July 22-27, the grant will be used to expand m2m's Mentor Mothers program, which pairs an HIV-positive woman who is pregnant with a Mentor Mother, who also is living with the disease and has been trained to guide and support other HIV-positive women as they navigate pregnancy, labor, and child rearing.
The funding from the foundation will enable m2m to work with African governments to embed the Mentor Mother model in their national health systems. A recent report found that the model is as an effective approach for underresourced health systems.
"Social entrepreneurs like mothers2mothers can transform health systems in pivotal and lasting ways," said Skoll Foundation principal Kristin Gilliss. "[M]others2mothers's founders, for example, realized that effective treatments and methods to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies are meaningless if the mothers who most need this care cannot access it. This is the kind of inspired social entrepreneurship — identifying gaps and creating unique systems to address them — that the Skoll Foundation seeks to encourage and support."
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