"Social Enterprise Helps Malawi's Poor"

Vocabulary !!

"sima"-a maize flour mixed with water

social enterprise-socially-oriented venture (nonprofit/for-profit or hybrid) created to solve a social problem or market failure through entrepreneurial private sector approaches that increase effectiveness and sustainability while ultimately creating social benefit or change.
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anti-retroviral drugs- medication that prevents the virus from reproducing
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Patners in Health (PIH) are a social enterprise, they currently help countries to sustain an economy with little suffering such as: Malawi, Haiti, Peru, Russia, USA, Rwanda, and Lesotho to provide a social benifit or change. They began working with Malawi in early 2007, being that it is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in Africa. They targeted Malawi as a country desperately needing a rural health project to address the devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region. With statistics of about 14 percent of Malawi's adult population affected with HIV and hundreds of thousands of children being orphaned by the disease. They often do not have an education, a job, or two few rooms for the amout of children they have. This major crisis is not one that their government was even able to cope with. PIH not only help with healthcare because they believe that in order for a person to be healthy they need education, food, work, and homes. Because the employment rates are low, they give grants to people who want to start small buisnesses similar to KIVA (microfinancing) but it is a grant and they will not have to pay the money back. They gave an example of fifteen women, HIV positive but on anti-retroviral, and they started a restaurant (PEACE) not only to gain a profit but also to gain a sense of hope and pride. These women have been successful, making the food to keep others healthy and having a profit for almost $200.00 per day which is good for Malawi. Right now, the cheap and most convient food to go to is sima, but PIH has declared this to have no nutritional value. They encourage people to grow and eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. This is difficult because water is a scarce commodity(they do not have a proper well) and it is also needed to grow veggies!! The money invested into Malawri comes from a partnership between the Malawi government and PIH. Within the next five years, the two new built hospitals will become the responsilibility of the Malawian government. I think that with the proper programs initially set up for them, Malawi will improve. I am a little worried, however, for the years to come as resources become more and more scarce. Also, if the government will be able to handle the finances of the hospitals since the HIV/Aids rate is high. I wonder can they stand alone especially since this is obviously new for them. I do appreciate the effort that PIH do to help not only from a temporary aspect but from the permante aspect.