INNOVATION

The Problem

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is growing faster than conventional mechanisms can prevent it, or mitigate its impact on those who are infected or affected by the disease...

• Every 8 seconds someone is newly infected by HIV 

• Every hour over 330 people die of an AIDS related illness

• There are more than 15 million children orphaned by AIDS
   

The impact of the epidemic is devastating and far reaching and requires much larger resources than are currently available to combat it.
 

Our Response

Because EJAF does not have unlimited funds, we try to use our money in innovative and resourceful ways to maximise its impact on those infected and affected by the disease.
 

Innovation cuts across all our other theme areas with strategies for our innovative grant-making including:

• Finding ways to collaborate with other national and international funders in order to increase the money directed to programmes.
• Funding new ways of dealing with existing issues, such as addressing the holistic needs of a household rather than individual issues such as a sick person, a vulnerable child, inadequate housing and food insecurity in isolation.
• Supporting innovative technologies, such as enabling community healthworkers in remote areas to use their mobile phones to SMS text updates on patient adherence, drug requirements and pharmacy stocks.
    

Innovation also applies to many of the pilot programmes that we fund, trialing new ways to provide or increase access to services in a sustainable and community based way. Pilots that, once proved, can be replicated or expanded by larger funders or government services.
  

One of our most successful examples of this is an Indian truckers prevention programme that we funded through Population Services International in and around Mumbai, which went on to leverage a further $55 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US government to continue and expand it's services.
 

For more information on some of our current programmes illustrating this theme, please click on one of the 3 projects featured above.