Boy am I glad I went to Moz last weekend, because as I suspected, things at work would be getting quite a bit more hectic upon my boss’s return from leave. We have an enormous proposal due next week—well really October 1st, so we have to have it ready to print sooner than that.
In the meantime, we have been brainstorming, writing, editing, and debating endless options for our proposal to the Dutch Postcode Lottery to which we are applying in conjunction with a NGO in the Netherlands called Stop AIDS Now!, along with a number of other collaborating partners. Apparently 4 of the 60 million Dutch play the Dutch Postcode Lottery, and they take half the earnings each year and donate them to charity. CHAI and SAN! submitted an early-round proposal and are now up against ten other proposals to see who will make it through to the final round. The potential payout of the grant would be 8 million Euros—of which the CHAI Swaziland office would be able to use 4 million to implement a number of “interventions” with the hopes of radically scaling up HIV testing and treatment by making it accessible to all Swazis, which in theory it is now, but for any and all reasons, the HIV epidemic is growing, and Swaziland can sadly boast the world’s highest rate of infection, striking 26% of the general population and 42% of pregnant women.
We have been brainstorming existing barriers to getting people tested and on treatment—rural population, lack of community involvement, weakened health communication system, never-ending list….and coming up with targeted projects to address as many as possible. Four million Euros seems like a lot on one hand, but as soon as the programmatic budgeting starts (and my main job has been crafting the budget), the money goes very quickly. But considering our current country budget is in the hundreds of thousands, a grant of this magnitude would be a huge boost for our ability to implement new initiatives. Just a few more late nights, and hopefully in a couple months time we will know if our hard work pays off…fingers crossed!
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