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Causes: AIDS, Community Health Systems, Education, Health, Public Health
Mission: Founded in 1999, Ubuntu Education Fund is dedicated to providing vulnerable children and their families in Port Elizabeth, South Africa with an empowering environment and access to services and opportunities. A South African teacher, Banks Gwaxula, and an American university student, Jacob Lief, founded Ubuntu Education Fund to improve education and health for impoverished children in township communities. Today, our 75-person staff serves over 24,000 children and more than 15,000 adults and youth with life-saving HIV services and vital educational resources.
Programs: See schedule oubuntu transforms the lives of 2,000 children and their familieshealth 1. Develop the province's leading hiv health clinic for vulnerable children and their caregivers. 2. Increase access to life-saving medicine for hiv-positive children and their caregivers. 3. Ensure hiv-positive pregnant women have access to drugs that prevent transmission of the virus to their children. 4. Provide access to hiv testing for children and their families. 5. Ensure each child in our program is regularly seen by a doctor.
see schedule oeducation: preschool-grade 12 1. Provide intensive, high-quality education from early childhood through grade 12 to ensure access to university and employment: 2. Improve school attendance. 3. Improve academic performance. 4. Provide after-school and weekend programming as well as holiday camps to ensure our children are both safe and learning during non-school hours. 5. Improve students level of life skills and self-confidence. 6. Increase the number of vulnerable children graduating from high-school and university. 7. Ensure our students secure employment upon graduating. Education: university & training programs 1. Strengthen our university scholarship program: 2. Ensure our high-school program prepares students to make informed decisions about their futures. 3. Provide more than 100 scholarships per year. 4. Provide financial, emotional, social, and medical support for our children throughout university. 5. Ensure students are paired with peer mentors from their communities to assist with difficult life choices.
see schedule ohousehold stability 1. Strengthen our household stability initiative providing comprehensive social, medical and nutritional interventions in all our children's homes. 2. Ensure the homes of our children are healthy, clean, safe and tb-free. 3. Improve food security for vulnerable households. 4. Decrease levels of transactional sex for girls in vulnerable households. 5. Ensure all child-headed households are secure and have adequate resources to support the family. Sustainability 1. Invest in ubuntu's institutional capacity to ensure we develop into a truly sustainable organization. 2. Create a foundation of systems, policies and protocols to further strengthen the hr department and inculcate our unique management culture. 3. Empower our team and ensure succession planning by further developing and training our staff. 4. Re-brand ubuntu and launch a digital platform to further mobilize a community of global supporters. 5. Complete physical upgrades and renovations of the ubuntu. 6. Center to transform the complex into a world-class health and education campusrecent achievements and recognitioninternal achievements:1. 2,000 children enrolled in ubuntu's cradle to career programming 2. Opened the region's first mother and child hiv treatment clinic 3. Launched a groundbreaking early childhood development center to provide 80 of our toddlers with pre-school education on par with any child in the world 4. Developed the ubuntu centre into a world-class health and education campus 5. Piloted the ubuntu pathways program targeting our non-university track students with a robust vocational training programexternal achievements:1. Ubuntu highlighted at the 2013 clinton global initiative annual meeting in new york city 2. President bill clinton brought a delegation of philanthropists and dignitaries to spend a day at ubuntu education fund headquarters in port elizabeth south africa 3. Jacob lief, ubuntu's ceo and founder, is a young global leader through the world economic forum 4. Jacob lief was selected as an aspen global fellow through the aspen institute