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NGOs, CBOs and business should focus on children
SANGONet 11 October 2002
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NGOs can help alert South Africa?’s corporate sector to the need for its partnership in community-based work for the support of children affected by HIV/AIDS. There will be an estimated one million AIDS orphans in South Africa by 2005.
Another nine million children will face enormous difficulties in living with infected and ill family members, and affected families in general will face substantial financial, emotional and physical strain.
Focusing on affected children is an opportunity to lessen the impact of the AIDS epidemic, but it is a new area of concern for the corporate sector. International NGO Save the Children believes NGOs have always been at the cutting edge of community-level responses to HIV/AIDS, and now have a key role in shaping corporate responses to affected children.
"Multisectoral partnerships are the optimal way to create effective safety nets for affected children. As the problem grows ever more immediate and acute, NGOs need to take the lead in initiating these partnerships," says Acting Programme Director Fiona King.
What is needed is for NGOs to alert the corporate sector to the opportunity for action, and to facilitate such action by referring business leaders to relevant resources.
"Childhood Challenged - A Toolkit for Action for HIV/AIDS-affected Children" was developed by Save the Children specifically to help the corporate sector engage with the issue of affected children.
It is aimed at managers, divisional heads, board members, shop stewards and Human Resources and Community Social Investment staff members, and based on recent research involving 95 large local and multinational companies, funded by the Ford Foundation.
The approach advocated in the Save the Children Toolkit has been endorsed by the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (SABCOHA), a business initiative created to address HIV/AIDS and driven by senior leaders of South African companies.
The Research Report and Toolkits are available from:
Save the Children
P.O. Box 40623
Arcadia
Pretoria 0007
Tel: 012 341 1889.
For information contact:
Charles Mandivenyi: [email protected]
Kevin Byrne: [email protected]
Issued by Sibambene Development Communications on behalf of Save the Children South Africa Programme.
Contact Janine Simon Meyer:
Cell: 082 893 0051
e-mail: [email protected] |
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