Help to give a full and safe life to HIV–positive mothers and their children in the township of East London, South Africa.

Why we care: Poverty is the largest barrier many mothers affected by HIV in the township of East London face in accessing anti-retroviral treatments.

How we’re solving this: Building a community centre to help mothers gain professional training, access regular medical care and live a full and safe life with their children.

South Africa has the world’s largest number of people living with HIV—an estimated 5.5 million of the country’s 48 million people have the virus—and a person is infected with HIV every eight seconds.

Many young women in East London discover they are HIV positive while they are pregnant. To manage the progress of HIV, these mothers and their children are supposed to be on antiretrovirals medicines.  However, the treatment is not always available at the local clinic, and the high cost of transportation is just one of the barriers to accessing the medication.

Oxfam has been supporting mothers in the East London community for some time by offering women build job skills and access a small microcredit fund to start small businesses. We have also supported the local school provide health facilities to care for HIV-positive children and their mothers.

For these mothers and their children access to regular medical care does not simply mean entitlement to a basic human right, but also having a future and the ability to contribute to the growth of the community.

But we can’t stop here!

Through this project, we need your help to complete the construction of the community centre and the medical facility that is estimated to be accessed by 10,000 citizens, including HIV positive mothers and their children. Also, we would like provide professional training courses for 500 more women and purchase equipment and teaching material the local pre-school.

This is our challenge: Give a better future to mothers, in the Township on East London.