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During a handful of days at the turn of the year we wired nearly a half million dollars to Africa. This ensures that our infrastructure is strong entering the new year, that the women caregivers in rural villages are supported for the next six months, that the HIV prevention and care strategies of the women's micro-loan project are in place, that orphans are cared for, that the 80 young women on nursing scholarships are progressing, and altogether that we will add to the 15,000 lives saved so far in Malawi. I thought you might be interested to know what our organization is like "on the ground" in Africa. Our Country Director is a social worker with many years experience in program design for relief and development work. He is our key person in Malawi. Our Central Region Programs Administrator, pictured above, is a nurse midwife with particular expertise in gender and development. She is also a Medical Mission Sister. She manages our growing nursing scholarship program and provides technical assistance and monitoring to many community-based organizations and rural hospitals that we fund to provide HIV-related services. Our Projects Officer in the Southern Region is also a nurse midwife, with particular competence in rural health care. She supervises the soon-to-be ten nurses and health educators coordinating the training and work of approximately 200 women caregivers in 50 villages in the Blantyre, Zomba, Mulanje, and Thyolo Districts. She also monitors community-based organizations and rural hospitals that we support in this region. The three senior staffers constitute our Malawi Technical Committee, which carefully reviews all requests for funding. What they recommend is carefully reviewed by the Grants and Program Review Committee of the U.S. trustees. This committee's recommendations eventually go to the entire board of U.S. trustees for final decision. We have an African trust with its own Malawi trustees. These include our Country Director, a Malawi Anglican priest, a Malawi nursing school professor, and a Malawi woman who heads a robust community organization. The trust is authorized to own property in the country and advises our Malawi staff as well as the U.S. staff and trustees. This "grass roots" leadership structure is well-trained, well-managed, and ensures that the destination of donor dollars is the intended one and that lives are protected to the maximum extent possible. We are proud of them, and hope you are too. Rev. Dr. William Rankin Email GAIA info@thegaia.org • Tel 415-461-7196 • Visit our website: http://www.thegaia.org |
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