There are thousands of private charities in the USA and the West that
assist the disadvantaged and AIDS suffers...many, many of them are Leftist or
populist in their goals...I would recommend that this AIDS orphanage learn these
NGOs individual requirements for funding...and to try to exceed their
requirements...especially for accountability and quantitative results...for many
of the organizations a 200,000 dollar budget is less than 5 percent of their
annual assistance to charitable programs...so a proper presentation could easily
raise the funds they have currently lost for their programs..
There are many wonderful people on this list with the computer and writing
skills to help this organization in this matter...please step up to the plate
you may be able to help save a life...GayBombay could even promote...the art of
grant writing...the same way they are currently promoting the cuisine
arts..
Elizabeth
In a message dated 7/18/2005 12:36:43 PM Mountain Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Many Indians cannot afford anti-retroviral drugs, which cost
Rs
1,300 a month.
Subject: Richard Gere leaves AIDS home in
crisis as funding is axed
Gere leaves Aids home in crisis as funding is
axed
Actor withdraws from a project he helped to start as his
trust
refuses to extend its three-year contract
Dan McDougall in New
Delhi, Sunday July 17, 2005
The Observer
Anjali Gopalan is hunched
at her cluttered desk casting her eyes
over a bewildering array of
paperwork.
'It is impossible to get a grant in this country. The
government
wants bloody duplicates of everything,' she mutters, signing
form
after form. 'Duplicates of duplicates, it is driving me
crazy.'
Behind her on the wall in the basement of the New Delhi
Aids
orphanage she has run for 11 years, the figure staring from a
large
photograph is unmistakable.
The Hollywood star Richard Gere is
holding a baby girl in his arms.
In faded jeans and a black sweater
with a woven Tibetan scarf draped
around his neck, he looks every inch the
globetrotting humanitarian.
'One of our girls,' Gopalan, 47, gesturing
at the baby in the
photo. 'She is six years old now and was abandoned
outside a train
station in Delhi as soon as she was able to walk. She had
been
wandering around for half a day. She was diagnosed with Aids by
a
street project and passed to us straight away. Nobody else would
take
her.'
Gere has earned his prominence on the office wall at the
Naz
Foundation unit for Aids orphans which lies in a cramped
southern
suburb in the southern recesses of India's capital. As the
charity's
main and, at times, sole benefactor for the past three years, he
has
helped establish the only such orphanage in northern India and
one
of only a handful in the entire country.
Through his Gere
Foundation India Trust, based in Delhi, which helps
a number of projects in
the sub-continent, the actor has helped give
refuge and constant medication
for 30 Aids orphans aged between two
and 12, ploughing almost $200,000 into
the project.
Yet the orphanage's worst nightmare was realised last week
when
Gere's money dried up. His trust refused to extend its
three-year
commitment to the project.
Gere's representatives say
they have done what they had agreed. But
Gopalan, the founder and manager
of the foundation, said the
decision was potentially catastrophic. 'Richard
has done so, so much
for the orphanage and we had always hoped he would
continue to
support us.
Gopalan claims Gere's trust told her that it
was no longer focusing
its energies on the specific care of Aids
victims.
'For the past 12 months we have seen money from the West
being
largely ploughed into Aids education and prevention, normally
with
strong caveats on how the money is used.
'The concern for me
and others who work with child victims of the
disease is obvious. The
strategy - for which Richard Gere has never
shown any support - is not
reflective of heartfelt investment but of
US foreign policy aggressively
promoting Christian [sexual]
abstinence. Aids sufferers, it seems, no
longer fit into the
equation.'
Earlier this year Britain signalled a
rift with America over Aids,
publicly rejecting President George Bush's
doctrine that abstinence
is the best way to stop the epidemic
spreading.
The Bush administration has pledged $15 billion for Aids
work in the
next five years, but the bulk of it will go to programmes
that
stress abstinence.
While this is not true of Gere's foundation,
Gopalan claims a number
of major US donors have told her that 'investment'
in Aids victims
was no longer 'economically viable'.
'My honest
opinion today is that donors in the United States in
particular no longer
see victims of Aids as a measured investment,
and believe me it has been
put to me in those exact terms by a
number of privately-run charities,' she
added.
'I'm sure looking at their own spreadsheets their argument is
clear,
and for every dollar invested in prevention they save thousands
in
treatment and care.
'This would be fine if they weren't
overlooking care programmes
altogether. I cannot believe my ears when I
hear them tell me Aids
orphans aren't worth the investment.'
As she
speaks I can hear the distinctively clumsy sound of tiny feet
echoing from
the neat dormitories above our heads as the youngsters
playfully chase each
other around their rooms.
To those such as Gudiya, three, dumped in a
Delhi market, the
orphanage offers drugs she could not otherwise get and a
nutritious
diet to maintain her immune system.
Last week the
traumatised girl spoke in Hindi for the first time in
six months there. In
time she will go to a local school.
Many observers say that the country
is close to a huge problem, with
up to 5.1 million people infected with HIV
already. If this estimate
is correct - and it is hotly contested by
right-wing politicians -
India is the world's second-worst affected nation
behind
South
Africa.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1530203,00.
html
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