In the battle against AIDS, families and communities are the first line of response to the increasing numbers of needy children, and a village-based strategy developed by a Swiss organization offers a highly effective way to help them. The strategy reintegrates orphans into stable households and rebuild the social fabric of families and communities so caregivers can better provide for children in the long-term.
Founded in 1989, Association François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB International) focuses on sustainable and grassroots solutions. Its FXB-Villages are a community-based, time-bound, and sustainable response to the AIDS orphans crisis and extreme poverty that is tailored to the community’s social, cultural and political characteristics. Each village program is designed to last for three years, becoming less costly each year, since the basic materials for the job training, health center, and school—farm animals, medicine, and books—are provided at the beginning of the program, and families become increasingly self-sufficient. The total budget for a three-year village program is US$150,000.
Each FXB-Village provides a comprehensive package of support and training to those most in need to equip them with the tools to achieve improved health, and social and economic independence. Core components include: income-generating activities, educational support, nutritional assistance, access to medical care and HIV treatment, HIV prevention and testing, savings and access to micro-credit, and children’s rights
This film, documenting the FXB Village Model in Rwanda and Uganda and narrated by Susan Sarandon, was posted on YouTube by FXB USA on December 5, 2007.
In 2007, FXB launched 10 villages in Burundi, India, Rwanda, Thailand, and Uganda, bringing the total number of FXB-Villages in operation to 27. Each Village enrolls 80 to 100 families, comprised of around 500 people, at an average cost of only $110 per person each year. The success of the FXB-Villages is extraordinary: children enroll, remain, and advance in school at higher rates than their peers, and an external evaluation shows that 86% of participating families live above the poverty line after the program ends.
“It is our shared global responsibility to rescue the millions of children left behind by AIDS and the millions more who have been orphaned due to other causes and who are drifting away from their societies - street children and all the kids that I call the discarded generation,” says founder and president Albina du Boisrouvray. “Investing in these children and the families that raise them makes our world a better and safer place.”
More than 20 million children worldwide have been orphaned by AIDS, most of them living in the world’s poorest places, and less than one in ten receives any external support. “In the turmoil of poverty and disease, these children end up neglected and abandoned when their parents fall sick,” says du Boisrouvray. “AIDS orphans have shockingly high rates of malnutrition, stunted growth, and illiteracy, and they are prime recruits for trafficking, gangs, and child soldiering. Stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, pandemic, and neglect, these children grow up amidst instability and insecurity.”
Income-generating activities are the foundation of the FXB-Village strategy, as they are the key mechanism for poverty reduction. The long-term sustainability of all activities relies on this component, as this income will help families escape poverty and meet their needs. Over the program’s three years, FXB’s financial support is scaled down as participants increasingly contribute to their families’ school and medical costs, taking an active role in building lives of greater stability and self-sufficiency.
FXB works closely with basic administrative authorities, heads of PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS) associations, heads of community groups, anti-AIDS clubs for young people and organisations that provide care for AIDS victims to select families. The selection process takes into account the degree of vulnerability (health status) of the beneficiaries; the situation and integrity of the family hosting AIDS orphans; the number of children receiving care; and the capacity and willingness shown by beneficiaries to achieve the program objectives.
FXB’s name honours the memory of du Boisrouvray’s son, François-Xavier Bagnoud, a helicopter pilot specialized in rescue operations, who lost his life at the age of 24 during a helicopter-borne mission in Mali. His family and friends founded the non-governmental organization to perpetuate the values of generosity and compassion that guided his life.
This story was compiled from three sources: the 2007 annual report of FXB International; and an article about FX villages on page 16 of the March 2008 issue of Dimitra Newsletter, published in Brussels by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN; and The Index of Global Philanthropy 2007 published by the Hudson Institute, pages 40-41.
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Categorizing these stories (539 as of Nov. 27, 2009) is often challenging, because many of them talk about people's or community activities that addressed a number of issues at once, or grew from one small project into something much larger. Reflecting this, some stories will have several different tags, even if they have been posted in one folder.
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