2012 – 2016 Children affected by HIV and AIDS Strategy Narrative

The Foundation will work to directly impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of young children affected by HIV/AIDS by supporting their development. This can best be done through assisting parents and caregivers, enhancing the ability of community-based organizations to deliver quality programs and services, and encouraging country-level and global stakeholders to leverage investments and resources, ultimately offering more young children what they need to develop critical cognitive, social, and physical skills that lay the groundwork for success in learning and life.

The Foundation is well-positioned to leverage a series of exploratory grants that have been made since 2009 to Save the Children/CARE and a consortium of international nongovernmental organizations and civil-society organizations to provide early childhood development for children affected by HIV/AIDS. The program strategy that follows represents an expansion and deepening of several grants for the development and testing of the Essential Package, a set of guidelines and standards for best early childhood development practices for children affected by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.The Foundation’s approach to changing the lives of children affected by HIV/AIDS focuses on improving the ability and capacity of families and communities to create the environment children need for healthy development. The approach is based on helping parents and caregivers gain skills to support the developmental needs of these children, and on strengthening community-based service providers to deliver quality childhood development services. A parallel dimension of this work involves informing practitioners and policymakers to share knowledge globally and nationally, and to advance the application of best practices.

The Foundation will undertake this work in a strategic way that connects to and leverages existing health, nutrition, and related services in areas of high HIV/AIDS prevalence. A key feature of our approach is to share knowledge and encourage networks of service providers, funders, and governments to increase their collective ability to identify and apply best practices in a manner that improves the efficacy of their work. This allows Foundation investments to be leveraged through sustainable proven practices and programs in the geographies we serve, and through replication of these approaches by other parties in additional geographies—thereby generating a greater scale of impact.