Since its founding in 2000, the Firelight Foundation in Santa Cruz has shouldered a critical share of the burden of fighting AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
The foundation, run by Scotts Valley’s Peter Laugharn, has raised millions of dollars to improve the lives of African families and children directly affected by HIV and AIDS.
Laugharn, the foundation’s executive director and CEO, said the company has raised more than $14 million for the cause.
“This year was big for us,” Laugharn said. “To mark our 10-year anniversary, we recently became incorporated as a nonprofit charity. We are very grateful, very excited.”
The group uses donations to provide small grants to community-based organizations in an effort to stifle the spread of HIV and AIDS among the world’s largest at-risk population.
Laugharn joined the foundation two years ago from the Van Leer Foundation in Norway, which also helps poor children in the Third World. Having worked extensively with the Firelight Foundation during his time with Van Leer, Laugharn jumped at the opportunity to join when a position opened in 2008.
“I was very impressed with the way (the Firelight Foundation) conducted business.” Laugharn said “They dealt with people and companies in a way that I really wanted to be a part of.”
AIDS has taken its greatest human toll in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the latest United Nations statistics, just over 10 percent of the world’s population lives on the African continent south of the Sahara Desert, but nearly 90 percent of the world’s HIV-positive children live in that region.
More than 12 million children in Africa have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and many more are made vulnerable by HIV or AIDS and poverty.
The foundation’s priority is the heavily AIDS- and poverty-afflicted countries of Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to Firelight’s website.
From its local roots, the Firelight Foundation has grown into a worldwide voice by drawing large grants from the likes of Sir Elton John, The Nike Foundation, Johnson & Johnson and hundreds of other donors.
Laugharn is married to Marie Kagaju, formerly of Rwanda, who is now part of the Scotts Valley Rotary Club and whose children attend Vine Hill Elementary School. She commented last week that her homeland is rife with the deadly disease.
“I do not know any single person from Rwanda unaffected by AIDS,” Kagaju said. “Mothers, fathers, grandparents and children are all losing friends, neighbors and family members.”
What does Firelight do?
Millions of children and families dealing with HIV or AIDS in Africa are helped by community-based organizations that work against the current on behalf of vulnerable children.
Firelight gives money to build up African grassroots organizations that will provide health and welfare services to their communities.
It is one of a few foundations that accept unsolicited proposals from small, grassroots groups in Africa.
One of the problems with unorganized or ill-structured charities, according to the United Nations Development Program, is that donations are often allotted only to help individuals diagnosed with AIDS.
By granting money to community groups in Africa, the Firelight Foundation is focused on fixing infrastructure and better allotting the
help that’s available for the community’s needs.
A dollar has a high value in Africa, where in many places, the monthly wage for a family averages 85 cents to $1.50, according to the U.N.
The No. 1 Millennium Goal of the United Nations is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and at least halve the percentage of people who live on less than $1 a day.
In sub-Saharan Africa, though, the trend is in the other direction. The number of people who live on less than $1 a day has more than doubled in a decade, according to the United Nations Development Program.
For information: www.firelightfoundation.org or 429-8750.
