Mobilizing Rwandan Communities in the Fight against HIV/AIDS

Among the poorest countries in the world, with over 51% of the population living below the poverty line, Rwanda is fighting to make headway against the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the social consequences of the epidemic, while grappling with other public health crises, chronic food insecurity, and the psychological impact of the 1994 genocide that left hundreds of thousands dead and many more displaced. HIV/AIDS has wiped out a large number of Rwanda's productive workforce, leaving behind orphans, widows and other vulnerable populations who now shoulder the burden to serve as primary caregivers and breadwinners.

Despite the challenges facing this small, central African nation, Rwanda benefits from an engaged government, and a dense and active network of grassroots community-based, faith-based, and non-governmental organizations.

Community Mobilization to Fight HIV/AIDS:

The Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Program (CHAMP) program is working side-by-side with these organizations to build their capacity to support, treat and care for tens of thousands of Rwandans living with HIV/AIDS and hundreds of thousands of others affected by the epidemic.

Like our work in Kenya, CHAMP is empowering them with the resources they need to fight the epidemic and to support their communities. At the same time, CHF is providing its partners with extensive skills-building assistance that is strengthening their capacity to mobilize communities, manage volunteers, administer programs and grow institutionally.

Cooperative Development

Recently, CHAMP also began to focus on expanding economic opportunities for our beneficiaries, in response to a new Rwandan law that requires all associations – including those representing people with HIV/AIDS – transition into for-profit cooperatives, as a means of ensuring their income-generating activities can become financially sustainable. With Rwanda as the latest addition to CHF’s USAID-funded Innovating, Measuring and Promoting Poverty Alleviation by Cooperatives in Transition Societies program, which is also active in Bosnia, Mongolia and the Philippines, we are now working through CHAMP to move HIV-affected Rwandan communities from small household-level production towards the development of new productive enterprises and services, while strengthening the links between producers and higher levels of the market chain. As a result, these new cooperatives are learning how pooled resources and income generating projects can move them out of poverty to tackle the massive detrimental impact of HIV and AIDS.