The St. Boniface Haiti Foundation has received a 3-year grant for $1.7 million from the US government under the President's AIDS initiative (PEPFAR).  This grant was awarded under the New Partner Initiative program which seeks to provide grants to new partners including faith-based organizations.  The government has realized that faith-based organizations are in many cases the ones on the ground working with the people. 

HIV prevalence in Haiti is thought to be over 5% of the population.  This grant will allow us to expand our AIDS prevention, care, and treatment activities to cover a greater percentage of people in the hospital's extended catchment area.

The prevention initiatives will focus on education programs with an emphasis on reaching youths.  A Community Health nurse along with community health volunteers will conduct monthly education sessions throughout the area.  Programs to reach youths will include having performances of skits that include role-playing, having education sessions at soccer matches, and using the local radio station to provide education programming. 

We will expand our voluntary testing program to outlying areas around the hospital.  This will help us to identify more people that can benefit from our AIDS-related services including increasing the number of women accessing services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.  We will also be starting up support groups throughout our catchment area and will have an extended network of community health workers to regularly check on those with HIV/AIDS.

Other additions to our programs made possible by this grant include upgrading our diagnostic equipment in the laboratory, providing mosquito netting and water filters to people living with HIV to prevent other infections, and offering micro-loans to women at-risk to help them start microbusinesses. 

This is a big step for SBHF as not only does it help us expand our treatment programs for HIV/AIDS but it opens the door for us to receive funding from the US government on an on-going basis and provides us with an increased level of credibility to other organizations that we will seek funding from in the future.