Joint Learning Initiative On Children and HIV/AIDS

Learning Groups > Community Action

Communities and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Community responses form a vital link in the response to the impact of HIV/AIDS on children. Eager to reach more children, community-based organizations are growing, but often struggle to reach their goals due to lack of available resources or inappropriate and cumbersome grant application processes. More information is needed to better understand the work that is currently being done by community organizations in highly affected areas and how governments and other stakeholders can help these groups in their efforts.

Research Objectives of the Community Action Learning Group

The Community Action Learning Group seeks to define how external organizations can best provide support for community responses to the impact of HIV/AIDS on children. Some of the key research questions of this learning group include:

How can external financial resources and technical support be most effectively channeled to strengthen community responses to children and families affected by poverty and HIV/AIDS?
How can community groups best target cash transfers to strengthen household coping in the face of poverty and HIV/AIDS?
How can policy and programming on children affected by HIV/AIDS be made more accountable to children and youth?

Learning Group Leadership

The Community Action Learning Group is led by two Co-Chairs:

Geoff Foster, based in Harare, Zimbabwe, is a specialist paediatrician with the Government of Zimbabwe, a founder of the Family AIDS Caring Trust (FACT), and a board member of the Firelight Foundation.
Madhu Deshmukh, based in Atlanta, United States, is director for HIV/AIDS at CARE USA. Deshmukh previously worked with grassroots organizations in India as well as the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO).

Research Findings

The Learning Group has commissioned 7 papers examining the issues impacting the community response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. These papers will inform policy recommendations that will be released in late 2008.

Find out more about JLICA's other Learning Groups.

View Co-Chairs

Geoff Foster

Geoff Foster trained in medicine in London and in 1985 took up his current appointment as specialist paediatrician with the government of Zimbabwe. In 1987, he diagnosed increasing numbers of children with AIDS and founded Family AIDS Caring Trust (FACT), a faith-based, non-governmental organization and one of Africa's first AIDS service organizations. Dr. Foster served as part-time FACT Director until 2000 and is currently chairman of FACT. He is also on the Board of the Firelight Foundation that supports responses to children affected by AIDS in eight African countries.

During the past 15 years, Dr. Foster has researched and consulted in the area of orphans and vulnerable children, resulting in numerous publications. In 1992, he researched and designed the FOCUS program, considered by UNAIDS as a model approach to community-based care for orphans. He conducted a 6-country UNICEF/WCRP study on the role of faith-based organizations in responding to orphans and vulnerable children, a 4-country SCF(UK) study, Bottlenecks and Dripfeeds, examining funding mechanisms for community-level responses for vulnerable children and a national situation analysis on children living with HIV/AIDS with the Government of Zimbabwe and EGPAF. He is co-editor of A Generation at Risk: The Global Impact of HIV/AIDS on Orphans and Vulnerable Children (2005) dealing with the social, economic and psychological impacts of the epidemic on children and analyzing responses. Dr Foster is co-editor of the international journal Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies. He was selected as one of the world's leading social entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation in 2000 and received the Order of the British Empire from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 in recognition of his pioneering HIV/AIDS work.

Madhu Deshmukh

Madhu Deshmukh has been working in the area of HIV/AIDS for the past fifteen years. She has worked with a range of partners, including community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, the Indian government, the UN, and bilateral and multilateral agencies.

As CARE USA's Director for HIV/AIDS, Madhu provides leadership and technical guidance to the organization's global HIV/AIDS response and activities. She works in close coordination with the leadership of all of CARE's programming sectors—including economic development, sexual and reproductive health, basic and girls' education, policy and advocacy—to ensure multisectoral responses to the complex problems presented by HIV/AIDS.

Before joining CARE, Madhu worked with UNAIDS in Geneva. Her previous experience includes working with grassroots organizations in India as well as the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). She has also worked with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNDP at national and Asia regional levels. Madhu's expertise ranges from designing HIV/AIDS interventions for populations at risk to strategy development and project management. She has also been engaged in policy advocacy and in strengthening community-based networks and networks of people living with HIV, with specific emphasis on issues related to community empowerment, gender and human rights.

Madhu holds a Master's Degree (MA) in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; and a Bachelor's Degree (Honors) in Psychology from Delhi University, India.