United Press International - Saturday, 1 December 2001
Ellen Beck

"I have seen what small amounts of money linked to the communities can do," Dr. Anne E. Peterson, assistant administrator for USAID, said Friday during a news conference outlining the group's Communities Responding to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic or CORE Initiative.

President Bush has made faith-based initiatives a key part of his administration's social and welfare platform and to that end, the U.S. government is contributing the extra funding, which is set at $1.5 million for fiscal 2002.

Warren Buckingham, a senior USAID adviser in charge of the CORE program, said the group expects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to become a partner next year, providing additional money to double the funding amount.

Peterson, who spent six years in Africa doing HIV/AIDS work, said little grants -- up to $5,000 -- mean a lot more work to ensure accountability but "they are so effective they are worth it."

The grants will go to secular and faith-based groups, which then will decide how to spend the money based on the needs of their communities. It could go for education, food, supplies, training caregivers, medicine or any other HIV/AIDS needs.

The Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, archbishop of Cape Town for the Anglican Church of the Province of South Africa, said the goal in Africa, where 35 million people are living with the disease, is to "bring forth a generation without HIV/AIDS."

"Our church has been silent for too long," Ndungane said via a videoconference hookup. "Statistics distance us from the human reality of AIDS."

He said part of efforts in sub-Saharan Africa is to train 90,000 homecare providers to ensure no one with AIDS dies alone.

Rev. Mark S. Hanson, president bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, said ELCA has joined with its Missouri Synod counterpart and its Lutheran World Relief organization to use the CORE funding to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS, care for the infected and the millions of children orphaned by the pandemic and to promote changes in sexual behavior to prevent spread of the disease.

"I believe it would be immoral for our church and our nation to write off the people of an entire continent by not providing more financial and material support, effectively denying them access to prevention information and treatment modalities," he said.

Hansen said the current funding is a mere start -- not even enough to build the foundation for a worldwide HIV/AIDS campaign.

CORE has finished a first demonstration project cycle of small grants in which 240 proposals from 43 developing countries were received.

Demonstration projects, with annual budgets up to $150,000 for as long as three years also are planned. The project is being launched in Africa because of the prevalence of the HIV/AIDS problem there, but USAID said it expects to expand worldwide.
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