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Compassion in Action Reports

Faith-Based and Community Solutions to Combat HIV/AIDS


Preface

In January 2007, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives launched a series of monthly Compassion in Action Roundtable meetings to highlight organizations, programs, and policies addressing critical social needs.  The Roundtables convene and facilitate discussion among policymakers, government officials, philanthropists, and faith-based and community service providers around targeted issues. 

The events reveal the President’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative as a broad-based, community-centered reform agenda; showcase innovative projects and promising practices; and draw attention to government efforts to expand and support the work of faith-based and community organizations actively engaged in serving their neighbors and communities.

The following report offers an overview of the December 12, 2007, Compassion in Action Roundtable, entitled Faith-Based and Community Solutions to Combat HIV/AIDS. Please note the statistical information presented throughout the report reflects data available up to the time of Roundtable, and excludes any data collected after December 2007.

Introduction
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
The Diplomacy of Deeds: Remarks by Karen Hughes
A Call to Action: Remarks by Kay and Rick Warren
Expanding International Partnerships in the Global War Against HIV/AIDS
Portraits of International Partnerships
  Geneva Global
  World Hope International
  World Vision
Domestic Strategies in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS
Portraits of Domestic Partnerships
  Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) Community Health & Research Center
  Lutheran Family Health Centers
  One: The Campaign to Make Poverty History (ONE)

Appendix A:Federal Agency Efforts to Combat HIV/AIDS
  U.S. Agency for International Development
  U.S. Department of Agriculture
  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
  U.S. Department of Justice
Appendix B: Biographies

Introduction

The HIV/AIDS pandemic stands among the worst tragedies the world has seen. More than 20 million people have died from AIDS, and, according to the most recent estimates by the United Nations, more than 33 million people live with HIV worldwide, including 1 million in the United States. Each day, approximately 5,700 individuals around the world lose their lives to AIDS.

President Bush has made the HIV/AIDS pandemic a domestic and foreign policy priority. In 2001, the United States helped to launch the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, becoming the first country to contribute to the Fund and leading the world in donations, having committed $500 million -- 23 percent of total fund pledges to date. In 2002, President Bush launched the $500 million Mother-and-Child HIV Prevention Initiative designed to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission. That same year, the Federal government permitted African and other developing countries to override patents on drugs produced outside of their countries to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In 2003, the President launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a 5-year, $15 billion initiative that is the largest international health initiative ever dedicated to a single disease.

On the domestic front, the Bush Administration has continued to support a variety of comprehensive prevention, detection, and treatment efforts. Since 2001, the Administration has devoted more than $80 billion to domestic HIV/AIDS treatment and care programs, increasing annual treatment funding by 37 percent. In addition, the Administration has devoted more than $18 billion in research to help develop new methods of treatment and prevention, increasing annual research funding by 20 percent. President Bush signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006, which provides care and treatment for low-income, uninsured and under-insured men, women, children, and youth with no other way to meet their medical care and support needs. The program reaches over 500,000 individuals each year through a network of 2,400 providers, making it the Federal government’s largest domestic program specifically for people living with HIV/AIDS.

The following report explores various domestic and international efforts in the global fight against HIV/AIDS through remarks prepared or presented by Roundtable panelists. The report also highlights the contributions of faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) working in partnership with the public and for-profit sectors to develop and implement the most effective strategies aimed toward turning the tide against this devastating disease.

When Americans witness this suffering, they feel a duty to respond. Some are motivated by conscience and a conviction that America should use its great influence to be a force for good. Many others are driven by faith – by the call to love your neighbor as yourself, even when that neighbor may live on the other side of the world. This spirit of brotherhood and generosity has long defined our country. And over the past six years, we have rallied that spirit in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

President George W. Bush
November 30, 2007

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

In response to the global AIDS pandemic, President Bush announced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in his 2003 State of the Union address. A 5-year, $15 billion initiative designed to combat HIV/AIDS in more than 100 countries, PEPFAR works worldwide, but targets 15 focus countries that are home to approximately half of the world's HIV-positive people, including: Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.

PEPFAR was designed to:

  • prevent 7 million new infections through large-scale prevention programs (including those following the ABC – Abstain, Be faithful, and the correct and consistent use of Condoms – model);
  • treat 2 million HIV-infected people with advanced antiretroviral treatment (ARV); and
  • care for 10 million HIV-infected individuals and AIDS orphans.

PEPFAR is implemented through a layered network of central medical centers (CMCs) that support satellite medical centers and mobile health units. The CMCs are located in existing hospitals staffed by physicians with expertise in HIV and infectious diseases, doctors-in-training, nurses, and other medical professionals. The primary satellite locations are independent medical centers with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and counselors who provide basic medical care, including the prescription of ARV treatment. Many private and public clinics run by faith-based groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operate at this level of care. Secondary satellites, staffed by nurses, nurse practitioners, medical technicians, and counselors, provide testing, diagnoses, and routine evaluation and care. Patients diagnosed with HIV/AIDS are sent from secondary satellites to primary satellites or CMCs for further treatment. Rural satellites and mobile units operate in remote areas and depend on lay technicians, nurses, and local healers to travel by truck and motorcycle to deliver HIV/AIDS testing and life-saving drugs to the most distant villages and farms.

PEPFAR builds directly on clinics, sites, and programs established through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NGOs, faith-based groups, and willing host governments. PEPFAR supports strategies implemented by host nations to promote local ownership and bring comprehensive national response efforts to scale. Governments and local civil society organizations are crucial for this development, and are well-placed to identify the needs of their own countries. Over 80 percent of PEPFAR partners are indigenous organizations, and in fiscal year 2006, approximately 23 percent of all PEPFAR focus nation partners were faith-based. These organizations play critical roles as first responders to local needs, and often have access to hard-to-reach or underserved populations, such as orphans and vulnerable children, and people living with HIV/AIDS in urban slums or remote rural areas.

When President Bush announced PEPFAR, it was estimated that only 50,000 people were receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. As of September 20, 2007, PEPFAR has supported:

  • Life-saving ARV for approximately 1.4 million men, women and children;
  • Prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission services for women during more than 10 million pregnancies;
  • Antiretroviral prophylaxis for women during 800,000 pregnancies;
  • Prevention of an estimated 152,000 infant infections;
  • Care for nearly 6.7 million, including care for more than 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children; and
  • Over 30 million counseling and testing sessions for men, women, and children.

The Diplomacy of Deeds: Remarks by Karen Hughes

Karen Hughes
Under Secretary, Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
U.S. Department of State

“This week’s action roundtable on HIV/AIDS is a reminder that what we do often speaks more emphatically than what we say -- especially when our deeds result in a better life for people in meaningful ways such as improved health and education.  I like to refer to those life-saving and life-changing actions as “the diplomacy of deeds,” because it is public diplomacy at its finest.

The President and Mrs. Bush’s commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS, like our other humanitarian efforts, sends the clear message that Americans care deeply about the lives of people across the world. When you save the life of someone’s spouse or child, a human bond is formed that is strong and long-lasting.

These efforts harness and mobilize the collective compassion of our country. They combine the tax dollars of American citizens and the expertise of our government agencies with the contributions and passion of private foundations and individuals.  They bring together the research of our health institutions, the reach of private companies and the hands and hearts of our faith-based and community organizations.  

History will show that President Bush and the American people have engaged in an unprecedented commitment to humanitarian causes – from fighting AIDS to educating children to providing disaster relief and to feeding the hungry in some of the world’s most difficult places. 

The U.S. leads the world in the fight against AIDS, providing more than half of all bilateral global HIV/AIDS funding. President Bush’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) is directing $15 billion over 5 years for treatment and prevention.

The fight against malaria also means that 15 countries in Africa will receive an infusion of expertise and an additional $1.2 billion to prevent and treat malaria.  The result is the opportunity to reduce the numbers of deaths by half in each of these countries.

These efforts are unprecedented, but not unique.  Yet too few Americans, and even fewer across the world, seem to recognize the extent of these American initiatives. 

Last fall, while I was speaking at a women’s conference in California, I summarized a variety of American projects  – from business mentoring for women in developing countries, training for nearly a million teachers in 20 countries, scholarships for a half a million girls in Africa, the first breast cancer prevention and early detection campaign in the Middle East, and more.

Eunice Shriver, the mother of the California First Lady, was in the audience and raised her hand to ask why we don’t hear more about these programs.

A short answer is that bad news tends to crowd out good deeds, although it’s clearly more complicated than that.  Across the world, America feeds the poor, educates the illiterate, cares for the sick and responds to disasters.  We support so many different development projects, in fact, that we often get little credit for any of them.  And in this time of war, such good news stories are overshadowed by the somber news of loss.

It’s understandable that our national attention is focused on our vital mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and the need to confront the continuing threat of terrorism.  It’s understandable that a bombing leads the news, not the digging of a well or the opening of a school.  And yet, in this season of giving and good will, it’s also important to remind ourselves and the world that America is actively engaged in “waging peace” by helping people improve their lives. 

Americans reach out to help people in need because of who we are and what we believe. We share with others because of our conviction that all people are equal and each person is uniquely valuable.  These convictions prompt us to action in the world, and when the people of the world see Americans in action, they respond. 

After the Navy hospital ship U.S.S. Mercy revisited areas of Southeast Asia that were ravaged by the tsunami in late 2004, polls showed the favorable opinion of the U.S. rose to 87 percent in Bangladesh.  When earthquakes devastated Pakistan, American military helicopters rushed emergency relief to thousands of people. The Chinook helicopter quickly became one of the most popular toys in Pakistan, and polls showed that the favorable opinion of Americans doubled. 

I recommended that President Bush deploy the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort to provide health care to tens of thousands of people in 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean this summer.  President Antonio Saca of El Salvador said, ‘This type of diplomacy really touched the heart and soul of the country and the region.’

In the case of disaster relief, like the response to the tsunami and the Pakistani earthquake, America’s efforts are focused and highly visible.  Less well known are the things we do every day.  For example:

  • America is by far the largest donor of food to the people of Darfur, where we have supplied more than half the emergency food aid from the entire world. Since the start of the conflict in 2003, America has spent nearly $1 billion feeding the hungry there.
  • The U.S. is still the largest bilateral donor of food and medicine to the Palestinian people.  Even when we could not by law or principle give money to the Hamas government because it refuses to renounce terrorism, we gave $234 million a year through non-government organizations.
  • The U.S. is the largest donor to the United Nations’ World Food Program. Since 2003, the U.S. has provided $1.27 billion in food aid, leading the fight against the number one risk in global health -- hunger.

These people-to-people programs deliver life, hope and a more positive image of our country.  I have talked with women in our literacy programs in Morocco who expressed gratitude that for the first time in their lives, they can now mail a letter, read the labels at the store and best of all, help their children with their homework.  When I asked a young man in one of our English language classes what difference it had made to him, he said, ‘I have a job and my friends don’t.’ A Somali mother almost reduced to begging told us that our food-for-work program had not only saved her life, but restored her dignity. 

At this time of year, when people are called to care for the hungry, the sick and the abandoned, Americans should know we are giving the gift of hope to thousands of people whose names we will never know.  And I will continue to advocate that we do even more, because the diplomacy of deeds serves both our own national interests and the people of every nation.”

A Call to Action: Remarks by Kay and Rick Warren

Kay Warren
Executive Director, HIV/AIDS Initiative,
Saddleback Church

“In 2002, I became a seriously disturbed woman. And in a flash and in an instant my entire life changed when I picked up a magazine that had an article about AIDS in Africa. And in the amount of time it took to read that article, my entire world turned upside down. I realized a global epidemic had been growing underneath my nose and I had not even noticed it. When I read that article, and discovered there were millions, multiple millions, of people infected with HIV across the world and that there were multiplied millions of children orphaned. And when I came to the point that I didn’t know a single one of them, I didn’t know a single one infected, I didn’t know a single orphan; it shocked and affected me, horrified me, and riveted me. I began to think ‘what is wrong with me that I don’t know this. How do I not know this? How can there be a problem that is so vast in our world and it has nothing to do with me- that it had not touched me in any way. What is wrong with me?’

And it sent me on a search to try to figure out what I was supposed to do about that because it became very clear that I was not just reading an article as an intellectual exercise; that I was reading that article that day and it was grabbing my heart and my mind for a reason. That it had something very personal to do with me and that I was to be involved. But I had no idea what that was to look like. Absolutely none. I was ignorant, I was misinformed; what I did know about HIV was wrong; I had to go back and relearn things I thought that I had known. I had to talk to experts and become educated. What I did do pretty quickly was form a small task force of people at our church of people who were interested in HIV. At that time, there was not very many. There was only a handful. I would mention to some people, and some would turn away from me, in horror, that I would even be talking about HIV. But, there were a few, like Elizabeth, that Jay mentioned, who resonated instantly and said ‘You care about HIV! I do too! Let’s start talking together.’ So a small task force was formed at our church. And then, very soon after that, I was invited in January of 2003 to this room, so it’s really emotional to me, because here I was, a complete novice, a newbie, who knew nothing. All I had was a broken heart and a conviction that somehow, I, as believer in Jesus Christ, and my church, were to be involved in caring for people with HIV. So I walked through that door over there, and my eyes were as big as saucers, my palms were sweaty, I couldn’t believe I was at a White House event. I mean, how cool, and weird, and terrifying is that?

And the first person I saw was Franklin Graham sitting near the back row. And I had met Franklin once and I was like, ‘Oh. A familiar face. Somebody I can say hello to.’ So I reintroduced myself to Franklin, and he, with great surprise, said ‘What are you doing here?’  And I said, ‘that is a really good question, because I’m not really sure what I am doing here. All I know is that God has laid it on my heart, has shown me clearly, that I am to be caring for people with HIV. And I am to help my church to do that. And Franklin, I am looking for models. We are so new at this. Can you tell us some models? Can you point me to some churches that have a ministry right now in their church to people in their community who are HIV positive, who are taking care of people in their church and their community, and at the same time care about people around the world with HIV?’ And he thought for a few moments, and he thought really hard, and he paused, and he said ‘I can’t think of a single one. You be the model.’

And it was a moment in which I said, I sank back into my chair and thought, ‘Ok. That’s it. That’s the task ahead. We must become a model. We must become a model for others who are seeking how to minister to the people in their own communities who are HIV positive; how to be involved in prevention, care, support; and how we can also, at the same time, have our hearts completely engaged with people around the world who are also seeking to minister to people in their community with HIV/AIDS.’ From there it began to grow, and we formed the HIVAIDS Initiative, and this little task force expanded into something and suddenly we were travelling around the world, and learning and experiencing, and meeting the local AIDS services providers in our own community.

People in our church began to raise their hand…at first anonymously, [with] anonymous phone calls, ‘I have HIV. But, I don’t want to meet you yet, because I am not sure you are going to accept me.’ With time, it began to grow, and people began to stand in our pulpit, and give testimonies to being HIV positive and what life was like, and give a view to our church of what it meant to live with HIV. And it began to expand. And I went to the International AIDS conference in Bangkok; the first one I went to. You talk about shocked—I was -- it was so -- I didn’t know the lingo, I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know what they were talking about, and I walked around and got very discouraged because it seemed even bigger than I had even the tiniest glimpse of. And I started to think there is nothing I, we can do -- there is nothing my church can do, that can make a dent in a problem that is a pandemic, that spans the globe, that carries so much stigma, that decimates families, that leaves children without parents. There is nothing I know to do about this. [I was] very discouraged.

But two years later, when I went back to Toronto, to the International AIDS conference in Toronto, this time my head was high, and I walked through the halls with a smile on my face, and you could say ‘What was the matter with you? Was anything better? Had the numbers gone done of people infected? No. Were there any fewer orphans? Was there anything really dramatically different in those two years?’ And in one sense you could say no, in fact it is worse. But, here is the difference: in those two years, I had come to believe with all of my heart that the church is the missing link. That government has a role to play, that only government can do, and Rick will talk about this in a minute, that the private sector, the business community, has things that only it can do. But there is a role for faith-based organizations that is the missing link that actually becomes the delivery system for the wonderful things we so long to provide for people with HIV, and not just around the world, but in our own communities. The church is the missing link.

And so I walked through Toronto, with a gigantic smile on my face, and that smile has not left, even though there are sometimes tears coursing down my cheeks, as I weep for my brothers and sisters and for children who are infected in my church, in my community, in my country, and in my world. But, at the same time, I have such hope. This is something—we can stop AIDS. That is not a pipedream. It is not something only for the newbies and the naïve people, like me four years ago, who would have such an audacious goal, but it is the goal that I believe is what I am giving my life for. It is what I believe we can do when there is a partnership with government, with business, and the churches….This is something I could talk about for days and hours. So I am going to stop and let Rick share with you what we are really convinced that the church can do. But, thank you so much for the opportunity to just be in this room today, reaffirming to you, in ways that I didn’t know, even four years ago-- We can do it. We can do it. We cannot do it by ourselves. We must link arms and do it together. PEPFAR is a huge portion of that. But we must do in our country what we are doing in other countries as well. This is something that is at home and abroad -- but we are together in this. Thank you so much for the opportunity to just talk for a few moments.  

Rick Warren
Pastor
Saddleback Church

“Dear friends, I am so proud of you. It says a whole lot more about you than it does about any of the speakers who are here today because there are thousands of people who didn’t come to this meeting, but the fact that you are here means you care. You care. And that is what matters most. What matters is the love behind what you do. Now, we come here today from all different kinds of backgrounds, and all different kinds of beliefs, ethnic groups, religions groups, non-religious groups. But if you care, I am your friend. If you care about ending AIDS, I am your partner. There are some problems so big in the world they cannot be stopped by any one single group. They have to be team tackled. When a football player is so big, he can’t be stopped by a lineman, you have to take him down with everybody working together. It doesn’t matter what your background is— nobody is saying whether you are a republican or you are a democrat; or Muslim or Mormon, or Buddhist, or Baptist or right or left, we just need to take this down. And that’s why I came here today, to talk to you about partnership, about collaboration, about cooperation in saving lives.

If I am driving down the freeway, and I see somebody who has been in an accident on the side of the road, and they are laying there dying, and they are bleeding to death, and I walk up to them, my first question is, ‘how can I help you?’ It is not, ‘Was this your fault? How did you get hurt? Did you cause it?’ Those questions are irrelevant. If I am in the hospital, and I have a heart attack because I am overweight, I don’t want someone coming in, [saying] ‘Oh Rick, been eating too many hamburgers? Your cholesterol is high?’ No, I want them to care for me, and comfort me, and help me. And you may think you just help a person. If there is someone laying on the side of the road, or a family laying on the side of the road, and they are bleeding to death, and I can’t get them into the car by myself to get them to the hospital, I am not going to ask when someone comes up to help, ‘Are you a republican? Are you a democrat? Are you straight? Are you gay? Are you a Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or Muslim?’  I am going to say, ‘Will you help?’

…I was speaking in Davos at the World Economic Forum, and I kept hearing people talk about [how] you need public and private partnership to solve big issues, like poverty, disease, illiteracy, and trafficking and corruption, and all the things we are doing in a thing called the ‘Peace Plan.’  And when I heard them talking about partnership, they were really talking about public and private, they meant business and government needs to get together….[If] business and government alone could solve the problems of the world, we would have solved it 50 years ago. They have been working together for a long time. You can’t—you have to have the third leg of the stool. A one legged stool will fall over. And a two legged stool will fall over. For there to be stability, you have to at least three legs to make the stool stand. And the missing leg of the stool in the battle against AIDS has been this right here—the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. That is the missing leg of the stool. It is government, it is business, it is houses of worships. I like to say it is public, it is profit, and it is parishes. It takes all three legs, and as Kay mentioned, each leg has something to offer in the ending of this pandemic that the others can’t do.

There are things that only government can do. There are things only business can do. But there are things only houses of worship can do that government and business will never be able to do.   In government, government has certain responsibilities; it has agenda- setting abilities, and it has permission-giving abilities. In some countries I work in, it is very difficult because of the government. There are others that make it are very easy because of the government. And so they can set national priorities. When President Bush said we are going after this thing, to the tune of 15 billon dollars in PEPFAR, and then a few years later said we are going after malaria. Malaria: 500 million people will get malaria this year. That is a disease we figured out the cure for a hundred years ago during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. Why do we still have it today? Because we don’t have leaders who say enough is enough. We are not going to go another year with this. And we have to say that with AIDS. Enough is enough. We are just not going to allow this to go on for another generation.

And government has many roles that are important to it. Business brings things to the agenda that only business can do. Business brings capital, business brings investment, and business brings health expertise and pharmaceuticals and medical care, and all sorts of things like that. And business brings management skills, because most government and most churches and most houses of worship…are poorly managed. So they have things they bring to the table that others don’t have. Churches and houses of worship bring a number of things to the table that business and government will never ever have and they will not solve this issue, the problem of AIDS, without you, and without me. Right now, there are about 16 million Jewish people in the world. There are 600 million Buddhists. There are 800 million Hindus. There are 1 billon Muslims. There 2.3 billon Christians. Most of the world has some kind of faith. In fact, the actual number of people without faith, secular people, is actually quite small….Most people have some kind of faith that they adhere to. And if you say, well wait a minute, we can’t have people of faith at the table in solving the issue of AIDS, you have just ruled out most of the world. And if you say you have to put your faith on the table in order for you to do humanitarian care for the sick and the poor and all the others, then you have just ruled out the vast majority of people.

Let me give you an example of this. President Bush asked me to be the closing speaker last December at the International Conference Global Summit on Malaria. And I brought a pastor from James’s [Ambassador James Kimonyo] country, from Rwanda. I said let me just show you an example of why you will never be able to solve malaria without the church. Let me just show you three PowerPoint slides. I said here is the first slide of the western province of Rwanda. There are about 700,000 people in western Rwanda. For this entire area, there are only three hospitals. It’s a two day walk to the nearest hospital. Two of these hospitals are faith-based hospitals, they are Christian hospitals. And one of them is a government hospital. So if you didn’t have Christian or faith-based hospitals, you would only have one hospital for that many people, for 700,000 people. It’s a two-day walk up and down a mountain to the hospital.

I put up slide number two. [There are] 700,000 people here are the 18 clinics for this region. Now a clinic could mean simply a shelf with a bottle of aspirin on it—they are not fully stocked clinics. But 16 of these clinics are faith-based—they are actually Christian clinics. Two are government. It’s actually a day’s walk to the nearest clinic. Now even still, if you are sick, you don’t want to walk an entire day to get medicine. That’s a long way.

So now watch this. I put up the third slide and I said it was covered with dots—covered with dots all over the province. Here are the 726 churches in this province. If you are sick, where would you like to go to get your ARVs? After it’s over, Melinda Gates, who was sitting in the front row, came up to me and said ‘I get it. I get it. The church is a distribution center.’ I said ‘Oh. It’s far more than a distribution center.’ The church has four things that government and business will never have.  And when I say church, you can translate this—if you are Muslim, think mosque. If you are Jewish, think temple, or Buddhist [think temple]. Whatever you think is your house of worship. I’m a pastor so I’m talking in terms of churches. But I said, for instance, I said I could take you to 10 million villages all over the world, and the only thing in it is a church. They don’t have a clinic; they don’t have a school—if you don’t believe that, just travel. I did 46,000 miles around the world in 45 days last year, and I could take you to 10 million villages and the only thing in it is a church. The church was global 200 years before anyone started talking about globalization. In fact, it is the only truly global organization in the world. You get out of the capital, there isn’t business. There isn’t government. There aren’t NGOs, but there is a church, a temple, a mosque. And so it has universal distribution.

Second thing, we have the biggest army of volunteers. Hundreds of millions of people volunteer through their congregation to help their community every week. If all the social services done by houses of worship in America were stopped tomorrow night, within a month, we would go bankrupt in this country. The government could not afford all the soup kitchens, the counseling, and everything else that is done free by houses of worship across America. Nothing comes close. Let me just put this in perspective. This weekend, in just Christian churches, 150 million people will go to church this weekend. That’s more people in church on one weekend than in an entire year of all professional sports in America. All professional sports.  I am not talking about watching it on TV, but getting out and going to a football game or baseball game. More on one weekend than for all sports in an entire year. It is an unawakened giant waiting to be mobilized. We have the most distribution, we have the most volunteers, we have local credibility, because when you are in that village, the people trust that priest, that Imam, that rabbi, that pastor, that minister, far more than they trust any government official; far more than they trust any business person; [and] far more than they trust any NGO coming in from the outside. Why? Because that person is sleeping in the same blankets as the villagers. They are marrying, they are burying, that person is caring for [them] showing love, is there when they are sick, there in all the major stages and seasons of life, and the people trust that. And if you want to go in and get a village to do AIDS testing, and [have] everybody get tested, you better get permission from the gate keepers and get them behind it….

I have pastored in the community I am in for the past 27 years, and I know my community better than any politician and better than any businessman. Why? Because I have been listening to their problems for 27 years. And I have been walking through their divorces and their miscarriages and every other problem in life for 27 years, and so we have that credibility. I believe that what it is going to take is people saying, we don’t have to agree on everything to work together on the thing we do agree on. Let’s get business and let’s get government and let’s get churches, mosques, synagogues, and everyone else who says I will help you get the people to the hospital. And let us save lives. God bless you.”

Expanding International Partnerships in the Global War Against HIV/AIDS

Ambassador Mark Dybul is the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the Department of State, a position created by President Bush to lead the implementation of PEPFAR, providing oversight and coordination of all resources and international activities of the U.S. Government to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Ambassador Dybul told the Roundtable to achieve the goals put forward in PEPFAR, “We have to work with everyone….That is why 83 percent of our partners are local organizations, that is why 23 percent of our partners are faith-based organizations. Because we are not going to get to people where they are, we are not going to achieve these ambitious goals, we are not going to turn the tide against HIV unless we do [partner with everyone].”

To expand and diversify PEPFAR’s base of partners, particularly local partners, in fiscal year 2007 an eight percent cap was placed on the amount of funding that could be awarded to any single partner in that country, with exceptions made for host government partners, commodity procurement, and “umbrella contractors” for smaller organizations.  Ambassador Dybul said this action was taken, “Not because we don’t want people to get money, [but] it’s because we think a lot of people need to get money and a lot of different organizations need to get resources.”

Another effort to build community ownership and ensure the sustainability of global HIV/AIDS programs is the New Partners Initiative (NPI). Announced by President Bush on December 1, 2005 (World AIDS Day), NPI is part of a broader effort within PEPFAR to work with new partners, including community and faith-based organizations, enhancing their technical and organizational capacity. This program targets potentially new PEPFAR partner organizations that have the capability to reach people who need HIV/AIDS services, but lack experience in working with the U.S. Government and it processes.

Under NPI, PEPFAR is awarding a total of $200 million in grants to new partners to provide HIV/AIDS prevention and care services in PEPFAR’s 15 focus countries. PEPFAR announced the first round of 23 three-year awards was announced on World AIDS Day 2006, a second round of 14 awards on World AIDS Day 2007, and will announce the third and final round in 2008. As a result of the first two rounds, PEPFAR gained 36 new partners, 70 percent of which are faith-based and community organizations. Nearly one-third are former sub-partners that had developed their internal structures and systems in the ways necessary for them to compete and qualify for direct partnerships with the U.S. Government. Ambassador Dybul noted that every international organization receiving PEPFAR grants is now required to transfer their programmatic responsibilities to local organizations over the life of their grant, describing the process as “an extraordinary act of faith in the people and trust in the people whom we serve.” 

Ambassador Dybul explained, “What we are fundamentally doing in PEPFAR, what we are fundamentally doing in the largest initiative in the history of public health globally, is to support these legions of heroes and angels on the ground, where the American people reach out and we are reached back to; to touch hand to hand and heart to heart across vast distances. We support people who see suffering and misery enfolded in the palm of their hand, but they cannot carry their people themselves for the load is too heavy. And so we must walk with them and we will walk with them and we will achieve the President’s goals because as President Bush so often says, ‘To whom much is given, much is required.’”

Portraits of International Partnerships

Geneva Global
Wayne, Pennsylvania

Geneva Global, a for-profit international philanthropic advisory service, became an NPI grantee in 2006. Geneva Global manages a $12 million PEPFAR/NPI cooperative agreement, including $8 million in PEPFAR/NPI funding and $4 million in funding from a private equity donor. Through the grant, Geneva Global intermediates funding to grassroots organizations that provide prevention and care services to the people of Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. Heidi Metcalf, vice-president of Geneva Global, described PEPFAR/NPI as a “resource revolution,” by which public and private resources can join together to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Geneva Global focuses on high net worth individuals, foundations, and corporations interested in leveraging available resources to broker public/private partnerships. Metcalf explained, “We are an intermediary with the vision to unleash people’s desires and resources to make a positive difference in the world. And we aim to be the most effective intermediary [of] philanthropic capital in the world. And our mission is to promote prosperity among the poor by connecting them, the investors, to the most effective life-changing programs in the world.”

Geneva Global began managing grants for HIV/AIDS interventions in March 2003. Since then, it has managed $8.3 million in grants for 241 projects affecting more than 1 million people. About $5.7 million in grants were made through the Africa AIDS Funds, a Geneva Global-managed partnership of private donors supporting the response of local faith-based organizations to HIV/AIDS in 23 sub-Saharan countries. From August 2003 to October 2006, 72 HIV/AIDS projects outside the AIDS Funds were funded reaching a projected 304,074 people in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Seven of these projects have been completed, and results evaluated by Geneva Global suggest they have benefited 36,179 people.

To date, Geneva Global has identified 30 new partners in Ethiopia and one in Cote d’Ivoire. Among the Ethiopian partners, 27 are indigenous, and three are national NGOs. Geneva Global will build the capacity of those NGOs so they can begin to compete for additional funding from other bilateral and multilateral institutions and donors.

World Hope International
Alexandria, Virginia

World Hope International, Inc. (WHI) is a faith-based relief and development organization that seeks to alleviate suffering and injustice through education, enterprise, and community health initiatives in 30 countries around the world.  In 2006, WHI became an NPI grantee and was awarded $7.7 million to lead an HIV/AIDS prevention and care initiative in Haiti. In order to implement the Haitian Partners for Health (HPH) initiative, WHI has partnered with six indigenous Haitian organizations to provide 32,450 Haitians with prevention and education; reach 10,500 with counseling and testing; serve over 24,250 orphaned and vulnerable children; train and support over 7,000 caregivers; and provide palliative care for at least 15,200 men and women.

Dr. Jo Anne Lyon, president of WHI, described Haiti as “the forgotten country in our backdoor,” adding, “Most of us have given up on Haiti. But, I am here to tell you that six local agencies with whom we are working have not. These are local groups who literally, for some of them, have been in existence for 10 years, and have literally used their own resources and the few resources that they could find. And as we have begun to work with them, as the intermediary for those six agencies, we have found first that all their book keeping was on paper. But I am here to tell you that after a few months, they know how to do QuickBooks. And it’s upgraded. And the capacity is growing wonderfully.” WHI pursues the identification and development of indigenous leadership and staffing, and focuses on grassroots development rather than U.S.-based development.

A PEPFAR partner since 2004, WHI has received almost $2 million in PEPFAR sub-grants for HIV/AIDS prevention, orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) care, and palliative care (PC). Through these sub-grants alone, WHI has reached over 140,500 people. WHI is addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis through community-based initiatives that improve household livelihoods; educate in prevention; train in care giving for the sick; and respond to the needs of orphaned and vulnerable children. WHI currently implements this community-based model in Zambia and South Africa and will be expanding to Malawi and Mozambique in 2008.

New Life Wesleyan Church
White Plains, Maryland

New Life Wesleyan Church (New Life) has partnered with WHI to bring resources to a small village in Zambia with approximately 1,350 residents. In January 2007, New Life leaders visited the Zambian village, interacted with the community, and pledged their financial and spiritual support to foster sustainable development in the region. Upon their return to United States, they communicated their commitment to the 1000-member congregation, which resulted in business leaders involving their businesses in the effort.

Rev. Mike Hilson, senior pastor of New Life, described three conditions that must be met before a church can actively recruit its congregants to join an international ministry effort. First, the project must be run by indigenous leadership because, according to Rev. Hilson, “There are church organizations, there are temples, there are mosques, and there are synagogues that exist in every community on the planet.  They need to be tapped into and used, because the help and the resources you need will exist inside of those communities, inside of those buildings.” Second, the project must be short-term. Hilson explained, “We are not a governmental organization that can employ people to stay there, so we need a short-term project that yields long-term results.” Third, Hilson said the assignment must be meaningful, adding, “We need something that is not a vacation.”

New Life will be sending a team to the Zambian community in January 2008 to assist in hands-on, practical projects such as repairing homes or working with the community members on income-generating projects like small-scale farming, animal-rearing, and vocational training.

New Life hopes to expand its partnership with World Hope International to sponsor holistic development and HIV prevention and care in additional Zambian communities.

World Vision
Federal Way, Washington

World Vision (WV) is a Christian humanitarian organization founded in 1950. In 2004, WV partnered with PEPFAR to lead a six-year, multi-organizational project in Zambia called RAPIDS (Reaching HIV/AIDS Affected People with Integrated Development and Support). The consortium of nongovernmental organizations includes: World Vision Zambia, Africare, Catholic Relief Services, C.A.R.E., the Zambian Expanded Church Response, and the Salvation Army.

Robert Zachritz, director of Advocacy and Governmental Relations, underscored the importance of building partnerships when battling a global health crisis such as HIV/AIDS. He explained, “The U.S. government cannot solve global AIDS alone.  It’s large, one of the wealthiest nations in the world.  They can’t do it.  Ambassador Dybul can’t do it alone.  The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation -- Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest men in the world -- cannot solve this alone.  The church cannot solve this alone, and wealthy businesses cannot solve this alone.  World Vision, a large NGO, cannot solve this alone. So we must have partnerships.”

The six RAPIDS partners were chosen because they were already in 52 of the 72 targeted districts in Zambia, and they know how to manage large sums of money. Moreover, those partners have over a hundred local faith-based and community partners with whom they can further develop an infrastructure of volunteers and care givers to provide critical services for individuals and families in need. By the end of the six-year project and with a total grant of $40,284,416, it is projected that RAPIDS will have covered 44 districts with a population of 7.8 million, and reached 350,000 orphans and vulnerable children, 150,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, and 27,210 youth.

Domestic Strategies in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS

Of the more than one million people living with HIV/AIDS in America, 25 percent do not know they are infected. Each year, roughly half of all new transmissions are spread by individuals unaware they are infecting others. In light of the alarming transmission rate, the Bush Administration has made prevention, education, and HIV testing programs central to its domestic efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Marty McGeein, principal deputy assistant secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HHS and executive director of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, said faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) have been instrumental to the Federal government’s prevention and testing outreach, especially among populations at greatest risk of infection. McGeein explained, “These partnerships both help the organization and the government to craft effective HIV prevention testing and treatment messages for at risk individuals and groups.  What we have discovered is that some of our messages are either not being heard or are not being understood.  And so one of the things that we are working with our partners…is trying to craft the message so people both hear, take it to their heart, and take the action that is required.  Be tested.  Find out your status.  Our goal has been to encourage conversations among community and faith-based organizations and public health leaders.  This is not something the government can do [alone].”

Since 1996, the HHS Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has worked with faith-based organizations (FBOs) to make them a part of HHS’s prevention programs, providing FBOs with capacity building assistance and technical training in communities with high rates of HIV infection. In February 2006, CDC held a two-day meeting a 2-day meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on faith and HIV prevention to expand and strengthen CDC’s partnerships with faith communities. Forty-eight people attended the meeting, including 29 leaders representing the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths. Participants were brought together to share examples of faith-based programs and faith leadership involvement in HIV prevention; identify religious and theological principles that support HIV prevention; understand the potential roles and activities that faith leaders may undertake in HIV prevention; and identify strategies to facilitate partnerships between public health and faith communities in support of HIV prevention.

One of the greatest challenges in the fight against HIV/AIDS is the stigma it carries both at home and abroad. McGeein said from the beginning of the epidemic in America, “members of the faith community have been there for its victims, providing meals, serving as hospice volunteers, and taking people to doctors and hospitals.  You were there tending the flock when others turned away.” However, McGeein explained that the government has not yet “found a way to bring faith leaders fully into the fight,” adding, “We need faith leaders to address the stigma that continues to allow HIV to spread.  We also need them to address the false sense of public security that, because we now have treatments, because of advances in research, that this disease is taken care of.  It’s a done deal.  It is not a done deal.  It continues to spread.”

CDC provides guidelines to physicians recommending routine voluntary HIV testing as a part of regular medical care for all people between the ages of 13-64, and annual screening for those at high risk. To help put these guidelines into practice, in his 2008 budget the President requested $93 million to purchase and distribute rapid HIV test kits to facilitate testing of approximately 3 million additional Americans. These test kits will be directed at communities with the highest rates of newly discovered HIV cases, including prisoners and intravenous drug users. McGeein said HHS and its partners “must continue our work to increase the awareness about the disease and prevent HIV infection,” rather than relying on treatment alone. She explained, “We cannot treat our way out of this epidemic.”

An HIV diagnosis was once perceived as a death sentence, and while there still is no cure for HIV/AIDS, HIV-positive Americans are living longer with the help of medications and holistic health care. In addition, mother-to-child transmissions of HIV have been nearly wiped out in America. Yet roughly 40,000 new transmissions occur every year in the United States, making prevention, along with care and treatment, a key strategy in the domestic fight against HIV/AIDS.

Portraits of Domestic Partners

Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) Community Health & Research Center
Dearborn, MI

ACCESS is a human services organization committed to the development of both the Arab-American community and the greater community, in all aspects of its economic and cultural life. To support this goal, ACCESS provides a wide range of human and cultural services, including the HIV/AIDS and STD prevention program. The program is centered on community outreach efforts that address the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, foster awareness in the religious community, and find ways to work together in preventing an epidemic in the Arab American community. ACCESS Director Dr. Adnan Hammad said early information outreach efforts were met with strong resistance in the community. He explained, “Twenty years ago when we first started receiving information about HIV/AIDS, we put this information in brochures and pamphlets in our local malls and supermarkets and the community at large. When we went the next morning we [found] them all burned, not a single piece was in its place.”

Dr. Hammad said the negative response comes from an attitude that “HIV/AIDS is associated with sinners, with people who do not obey God, and with people who are not following the right path. It is a disease that is full of stigma and barriers.” In 2005, in partnership with HHS through the Center for Disease Control and Prevntion’s HIV Prevention Projects for Community-Based Organizations program, ACCESS created an Arab and Muslim coalition that brought imams together to discuss how they can counsel patients with HIV/AIDS, a breakthrough that Dr. Hammad attributes to HHS’s “vision and guidance.” ACCESS now provides HIV/AIDS screening services in the local malls, demonstrating a complete transformation from their earlier efforts. “Through these 20 or 23 years…we broke through slowly and steadily. And that is what it takes to fight an epidemic like HIV/AIDS…in the Arab and Muslim communities,” Dr. Hammad explained.

Lutheran Family Health Centers
Brooklyn, NY

For more than 35 years, Lutheran Family Health Centers (LFHCN) has served the ethnically diverse, medically underserved neighborhoods of southwest Brooklyn. LFHCN has grown to become one of the largest, most comprehensive Section 330-funded Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) networks in the nation. Adhering to a managed care model, the network generated 631,550 visits in 2004, providing services to 87,839 patients. Currently, the LFHCN operates ten full-time primary care sites, all of which offer confidential HIV counseling and testing. HIV positive clients can receive treatment through LFNCN’s Special Care Immunology Services Program. LFHCN also provides a behavioral health program that co-locates mental health and chemical dependency services with HIV primary care.

When LFHCN decided to develop a Caribbean health center to serve the large Caribbean community in Brooklyn, Cheryl-Anne Hall, vice president of governmental and corporate affairs, said the first thing she did was hire a faith-based liaison to the community. Through the relationships they cultivated, Hall was able to get some of the small, storefront churches to develop an interest in learning about HIV/AIDS in their community. Eventually, Hall explained, “When we saw that children were interested in finding out information about HIV/AIDS we called the faith-based community together and, again, we were able to begin that discussion and in the essence of time we continued a collaboration of working with them. I sent my medical director out every Sunday to speak to the faith-based from the pulpit, knowing fully well that the next time they invited us they were going to be willing to talk about HIV/AIDS.”

Hall described a pastor who did not think anyone in his church was HIV-positive, but nevertheless agreed to let LFHCN visit his congregation to discuss the disease. When Hall attended the pastor’s church, she recognized two LFHCN HIV-positive patients sitting in the pews. Hall said the pastor “began to learn anything there was about HIV/AIDS, and he has been our champion in helping us to push this forward. He organized pastors’ testing; he organized anything to do with AIDS right with us.” Hall added, “I share that with you to say there is a way you can work…with the community, the faith-based organizations, because that’s the community we serve….The faith-based organizations must take lead and become champions of change in our communities if we are to continue to address this pandemic.”

One: The Campaign to Make Poverty History (ONE)
Washington, D.C.

ONE is a grassroots organization uniting millions of Americans in the effort to end extreme poverty and conquer preventable diseases like malaria, TB, and HIV. Founded in 2004 by many of the nation’s leading non-profits, ONE is dedicated to building a better world by saving the lives of the poorest. ONE has a coalition of 2.4 million Americans and more than 150 of the nation’s leading non-profit, advocacy and humanitarian organizations, united to get the attention of America’s leaders and call on them to do more for those people who need our help most.

Dayna Cade, executive director of ONE, says that despite having the technological and financial means to save lives and alleviate needless suffering in the world, “What we don’t have enough of is the political will, despite the leadership of this president, we still don’t have enough political will. And that is why the ONE Campaign exists, to raise awareness of the problem, increase the grassroots presence through sheer numbers, and then mobilize those members.”

Cade explained that ONE activists are mobilized “to make sure their members of Congress, senators, and presidential candidates hear loud and clear that voters care” about global health issues such as HIV/AIDS. ONE launched a non-partisan campaign called ONE Vote ‘08 to make global health and extreme poverty foreign policy priorities in the 2008 presidential election. Cade said the project is unifying because, “Unlike many issues in this campaign that we see everyday on our televisions; unlike many issues that divide Republicans and Democrats so sharply along partisan lines, ONE Vote ‘08 brings people together.” Cade predicted the project would “impact the political system in an unprecedented way,” and will hold presidential candidates to the commitments they make on the campaign trail.

Appendix A: Federal Agency Efforts to Combat HIV/AIDS

U.S. Agency for International Development
Office of HIV/AIDS

The USAID office of HIV/AIDS is the focus of HIV/AIDS technical leadership for the Agency and has primary responsibility for leading the Agency’s PEPFAR efforts. In cooperation with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, other U.S. Government partners, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations, USAID provides global technical leadership on the full range of issues related to HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment; manages numerous research and field support programs; and monitors the impact of the Agency’s HIV/AIDS programs.

USAID support of PEPFAR HIV/AIDS programs extends to nearly 100 countries through a combination of direct in-country presence and a variety of regional programs. Under PEPFAR, USAID’s staff works with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to provide training, technical assistance, and supplies – including pharmaceuticals – to prevent and reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS and provide care and treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS.

USAID is uniquely positioned to support multisectoral responses to HIV/AIDS that address the widespread impact of HIV/AIDS outside the health sector in high-prevalence countries. In these countries, USAID targets programs in areas that affect the AIDS pandemic, such as agriculture, education, democracy, and trade, with the mutual objective of reducing the impact of the pandemic on nations, communities, families, and individuals.

For more information for information please visit: http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_partnerships/fbci/.

U.S. Department of Agriculture

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recognizes the important role that faith-based and community organizations play in helping us to better serve those in need. Through our partnership and grant opportunities, USDA welcomes faith-based and community groups as important partners in our domestic food and nutrition programs, international food aid programs, and domestic rural development opportunities.

Proper nutrition supports the health and well-being of those who suffer from HIV/AIDS. The USDA offers a variety of programs to alleviate hunger and improve nutrition, both at home and abroad, which can be valuable tools in the treatment process.

The following are just a few of the domestic USDA Food and Nutrition Service programs aimed at providing food and nutrition to children, families, and other low-income individuals:

Through the Child and Adult Care Food Program, nutritious meals and snacks are served to eligible children and adults who are enrolled for care at participating child care centers, day care homes, and adult day care centers.

The Summer Food Service Program ensures that children in low-income areas continue to have access to nutritious meals during long school vacations, when they do not have access to school lunch or breakfast.

The National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to more than 26 million children each school day. In addition, the Afterschool Snack Program, run through the National School Lunch Program, reimburses organizations for snacks served to children in afterschool educational and enrichment programs.

The Food Stamp Program is the cornerstone of Federal nutrition assistance programs and provides crucial support to working poor and needy households.

The following two programs from USDA Foreign Agricultural Service provide food aid and humanitarian assistance around the world:

The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program assists countries that have made a commitment to support and enhance the quality of their education and nutrition sectors.

The Food for Progress Program is designed to support countries that have made commitments to introduce or expand free enterprise elements into their agricultural economies through changes in commodity prices, marketing, input availability, distribution, and private sector involvement.

If you would like to learn more about programs listed above, as well as other opportunities for faith-based and community organizations to partner with USDA, please visit: http://www.usda.gov/fbci/.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves. Each year, HHS administers more grant dollars than all other Federal agencies combined—distributing 60 percent of all Federal dollars awarded. With programs covering a wide spectrum of activities, there are many opportunities for faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) to partner with HHS.

For more information on HHS, please visit http://www.hhs.gov/fbci/.

Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, reauthorized in 2006, makes the right care and treatment possible for low-income, uninsured and under-insured men, women, children and youth with no other way to meet their medical care and support needs. The Program prioritizes lifesaving services for individuals living with HIV/AIDS, including HIV/AIDS medications and primary care and targets resources to areas that have the greatest needs.

The program is administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)HIV/AIDS Bureau. HRSA makes grants to hundreds of grantees; including States, cities and faith-based and community organizations, who deliver care to more than half a million low-income people with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. each year. The Ryan White Program reaches over 500,000 individuals each year, making it the Federal government’s largest program specifically for people living with HIV disease.

Global HIV/AIDS Program (GAP) HHS is committed to improving care and support services for people living with HIV/AIDS in severely affected regions of the world. The GAP seeks to increase access to international HIV/AIDS care, treatment, and support by working to prevent HIV infection; improve treatment, care, and support for people living with HIV; and build capacity and infrastructure to address the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.

For more information, visit http://hab.hrsa.gov/special/global.htm.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) As a part of its overall public health mission, CDC provides leadership in helping control the HIV/AIDS epidemic by working with community, state, national, and international partners in surveillance, research, and prevention and evaluation activities. CDC’s programs work to improve treatment, care, and support for persons living with HIV/AIDS and to build capacity and infrastructure to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States and around the world.

For more information, visit http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/aboutDHAP.htm.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) The FDA is a regulatory agency that enforces the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Public Health Service Act, assuring that drugs and biologics are safe and effective for their intended uses, and properly labeled. FDA responsibilities include a variety of HIV/AIDS-related issues. The agency primarily serves a review and oversight function in areas related to drugs, biologics and medical devices for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, and AIDS-related conditions including therapeutic products, prevention, diagnostic testing and blood screening, food safety, and research.

For more information, visit www.fda.gov/oashi/aids/hiv.html.

AIDSinfo AIDSinfo is a project within HHS that offers the latest federally approved information on HIV/AIDS clinical research, treatment and prevention, and medical practice guidelines for people living with HIV/AIDS, their families and friends, health care providers, scientists, and researchers.
For more information, visit www.aidsinfo.nih.gov.

AIDS.gov AIDS.gov serves as an information gateway to drive traffic to federal domestic HIV/AIDS information and resources. The site includes information on new resources, funding opportunities, upcoming events, and the latest developments in HIV/AIDS research.

For more information, visit www.aids.gov.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

The objective of HUD’s Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS (HOPWA) program is to provide states and localities with the resources and incentives to devise long-term comprehensive strategies for meeting the housing needs of low-income persons and their families living with HIV/AIDS.  HOPWA remains the only Federal program solely dedicated to providing rental housing and other assistance to this special needs population. HOPWA grant recipients measure client outcomes to assess how housing assistance results in creating or maintaining stable housing, reduces risks of homelessness, and improves access to healthcare and other need support. Under this client outcome focus, HOPWA grantees reported that 93 percent of beneficiaries are achieving good results in on going stable housing arrangements or support that reduced the risk of homelessness.

HOPWA grant resources support local housing initiatives that provide permanent supportive housing for persons living with HIV/AIDS. The range of housing supported with HOPWA includes the use of rental assistance payments; support for maintaining current residences through the use of short-term mortgage, and utility assistance payments; permanent housing placement activities; and the operating costs for supportive housing facilities, such as community residences, supporting beneficiaries with on-site activities and needed services. In addition, some new units of housing may be renovated or constructed. An essential component in providing housing assistance for a special needs population is the coordination and delivery of supportive services such as: support for residents with their daily living activities; case management; substance abuse treatment and counseling; and other services to ensure these clients remain stably housed. HOPWA clients also use a range of health and supportive services funded by HHS through the Ryan White Care Act programs.

HOPWA funds are provided through formula allocations, competitive awards, and national technical assistance awards.
Please visit http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/aidshousing/programs/ for more information.

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention (OJJDP) Through its National Program Solicitation, OJJDP funds the Best Friends Foundation, a national non-profit organization that promotes self-respect among our youth through the practice of self-control and provides participants with the skills, guidance and support to choose abstinence from sex until marriage and to reject illegal drug and alcohol use. As part of its curriculum the Best Friends Foundation teaches about the dangers of premarital sexual activity and drug use, including the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. In FY 2007. the Best Friends Foundation received a three-year grant of $1.12 million.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)The BOP staff educate HIV-infected inmates on community resources that meet a range of needs, including mental health, substance abuse, and AIDS drug assistance services, available to inmates upon leaving prison. There is a solid opportunity to make BOP staff more aware of the FBCO resources available in their communities and to offer reentry inmates the opportunity to pair with FBCOs.

For more information visit http://www.usdoj.gov/fbci/.

Appendix B: Biographies

Dayna Cade
Executive Director
ONE Campaign

Dayna Cade is the executive vice president of ONE:  The Campaign to Make Poverty History. Prior to joining ONE, Ms. Cade founded DC Strategies, LLC, a political and business consulting firm specializing in work with the U.S. Congress, Administration and foreign governments. Ms. Cade is a three-time political appointee in the Administration of President George W. Bush. She has also served as a senior aide in the U.S. Senate and, prior to public service, was a lobbyist representing state and local governmental entities and public interest groups. Ms. Cade has served in the White House in the National Security Council’s Office of International Economics. Her primary focus was laying policy groundwork for the President’s participation in multilateral meetings, most notably the annual G-8 Summit. She worked with virtually every department of the federal government in order to achieve consensus on U.S. positions on a breadth of economic, health, education and foreign policy issues. She then participated in negotiations with other G-8 countries to achieve the President’s goals. Prior to joining the White House, Ms. Cade worked at the U.S. State Department for the Under Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs. In that capacity, she coordinated the State Department’s economic relations with the Middle East as well as multilateral trade, energy, sanctions and investment policies. Ms. Cade advised the Under Secretary on Congressional issues and worked on U.S. Government efforts to open foreign markets, promote exports, stimulate global growth and development and promote regional stability. In the Executive Office of the President, as a part of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Ms. Cade was the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Congressional Affairs. She advanced the President’s international trade agenda in Congress, focusing on trade promotion authority, the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, investment, intellectual property and all trade issues pertaining to Asia and Africa.

Reverend Bonnie Camarda
Director of Partnerships
The Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia

Rev. Camarda has been a pioneer in many ways. Born in Havana, Cuba, she grew up in Madrid, Spain, and graduated from the University of Madrid with a degree in business administration and a Baccalaureate in administrative science. She earned an MBA from Wharton in 1973, at a time when few women were admitted to MBA programs. She also received a masters of divinity from the Luther Rice Seminary in Jacksonville, Florida.

Since becoming the director of partnerships for the Salvation Army in 1999, Rev. Camarda has served as a liaison for the Salvation Army with both the Philadelphia School District and as an organizer of the first Amnesty program, which traded illegal hand guns for musical instruments. In addition to her countless services to the Philadelphia community, Rev. Camarda has been committed to serving the war on HIV/AIDS.

A bilingual speaker, Rev. Camarda has served as a frequent radio guest on shows across the country dealing with HIV in the hispanic community as part of the national Leadership Campaign on AIDS: Mosaica: The Center for Nonprofit Development and Pluralism. Rev. Camarda has furthered AIDS education through The Leadership Campaign on AIDS (TLCA), a program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human services’ office of HIV/AIDS policy. Working closely with TLCA, she has helped the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory address HIV/AIDS through staff education and organizational training to expand HIV prevention, testing, and treatment.

Ambassador Mark Dybul
U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator

Ambassador Mark R. Dybul serves as the United States Global AIDS Coordinator, leading the implementation of President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. From March to August 2006, he served as Acting U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, and prior to that he held the positions of Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Assistant U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator. Before coming to the coordinator’s office, Ambassador Dybul served on the Planning Task Force for the Emergency Plan, and was the lead for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for President Bush’s International Prevention of Mother and Child HIV Initiative.

At HHS, he also served as the Assistant Director for Medical Affairs, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as Co-Executive Secretary of the HHS HIV therapy guidelines for adults and adolescents. He continues to be a Staff Clinician in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at NIAID/NIH and maintains an active role as the principal investigator for clinical and basic research for U.S. and international protocols with an emphasis on HIV therapy, particularly those that may be applicable in resource-poor settings, including intermittent therapy and HIV reservoirs and immunopathogenesis. Ambassador Dybul is a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the uniformed service of HHS. He is also a former member of the World Health Organization’s Writing Committee to develop global HIV therapy guidelines. Ambassador Dybul received his B.A. (1985) and M.D. (1992) from Georgetown University before completing his residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals (1995) and a fellowship in infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1998).

Cheryl-Anne Hall
Vice President of Governmental & Corporate Affairs,
Lutheran Family Health Centers

Cheryl-Anne Hall is the vice president of Governmental and Corporate Affairs for Lutheran Family Health Centers located in Brooklyn, New York. While Ms. Hall served as the Director of the Caribbean American Family Health Center, one of the nine full time Lutheran Family Health Centers, she was appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. She also served on the New York State Task Force to develop the guidelines to operate AIDS Adult Day Treatment Programs. She has worked with faith-based community leaders in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn to develop an HIV/AIDS prevention program and has initiated testing in many of these churches.

Ms. Hall also serves as an advisor to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Global Mission.

Dr. Adnan Hammad
Director, ACCESS Community & Health Research Center

Dr. Hammad has established and directs a one of a kind community-based health, mental health and research center at the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS). His responsibilities include developing programs designed to promote and improve the health status of the Arab-American community, a model that could be adapted to other similar ethnic minorities. He adopted a holistic approach to manage the health care needs of the community. This approach integrates public health research and environment, mental health, primary and specialty medical care. These programs are financed by a variety of local, state and federal sources. Dr. Hammad is very active academically. He is currently a volunteer professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine and consults at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health- Community-based Public Health Division. Dr. Hammad has an extensive education and experience in Public Health Care Policy and Management. He holds several degrees including; a master’s in science, a master’s in health economics, and a doctorate in health services policy and management.

Dr. Hammad has broad experience in health services policy, management and training at both the macro and micro levels. Additionally, he has had a distinguished international consulting experience in this field in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, USA and Canada. He held numerous leadership roles in professional, non-profit and non-governmental organizations. In the research field, Dr. Hammad’s projects include collaboration with NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences as a principal investigator on the Environmental Impact on Arab Americans in Metro Detroit. Currently, he is the primary investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HIV/AIDS Program, whose primary goal is to reduce the morbidity of STD/HIV/AIDS. Also, he is co-investigator for both the “Epidemiology of Diabetes and its Risk Factors among Arab-Americans” in cooperation with Wayne State School of Pharmacy and the American Diabetes Association as well as “Tobacco Use among Arab American Youth” in cooperation with NIH and Wayne State School of Nursing. He authored and co-authored over 100 publications in the fields of behavior and epidemiological research including the “Ethnicity and Disease special supplements on Arab-American Health Introduction: proceedings of the fourth biennial national conference on health issues in the Arab -American community” Ethnicity & Disease, volume 1501, supplement 3, February 2005, S1-VII. Dr. Hammad chaired the first, second, third, and fourth Biennial National Conference on Health Issues in the Arab American Community. Dr. Hammad has received numerous awards for his leadership in community health, one of which includes the Wayne State School of Medicine Pathfinders in Medicine Award in 2004. He was the first Arab American to receive this award in recognition of leadership initiative in promoting and improving the health status of the Arab American Community.

Jay Hein
Deputy Assistant to the President and Director
White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

Jay F. Hein was named Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives on August 3, 2006. He is the founding president of the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, an international public policy research firm headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. In this capacity, Jay directed the institute’s research portfolio concentrating on a range of community-based policies such as welfare-to-work, access to college, affordable health care and crime prevention.

Jay also served as Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation for American Renewal, a public charity established by Ambassador Daniel R. Coats. The foundation provides financial grants and other support to community-based organizations and educates the general public on effective compassion principles and practices.

Prior to taking the helm of Sagamore Institute, Jay was Executive Director of Civil Society Programs at Hudson Institute, including the Welfare Policy Center, the Faith in Communities initiative, and community-based health care reform. Also at Hudson Institute, Jay served as Director of Hudson’s field office in Madison, Wisconsin, where he conducted hands-on research and analysis in support of the State’s welfare reforms. He also served in the Wisconsin State government as a policy director. In both of these roles, Jay helped design and implement Wisconsin’s ground-breaking welfare replacement program. Earlier in his career, Jay worked in a range of leadership roles within Illinois State government, including the Illinois Department of Public Aid; Illinois Secretary of State’s Office; and Illinois State Library, where he contributed to the initial planning of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.  Jay performed his Master’s work in Political Studies at the University of Illinois-Springfield and earned his B.A. at Eureka College, where he was an inaugural member of the Ronald W. Reagan Fellowship program.

Reverend Mike Hilson
Senior Pastor
New Life Wesleyan Church

Pastor Mike Hilson is the senior pastor of the New Life Wesleyan Church in La Plata Maryland. He has been a pastor in the Wesleyan Church serving three different congregations since 1990. As senior pastor at New Life Wesleyan, he has led the congregation to significant involvement in local and international relief work, most recently in Zambia through World Hope International. Service and work teams are regularly sent to Guatemala and Zambia, and the church participates financially in relief efforts in the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Belgium. Locally, the congregation is deeply involved in compassion ministries that include disaster relief, emergency and transitional housing, year-round food pantry, gathering food, and other items for distribution during Christmas holidays in conjunction with the Charles County Department of Social Services.  In addition to his work at New Life Wesleyan Church, Mike currently serves as the assistant district superintendent of the Chesapeake District of the Wesleyan Church, president of the Catherine Foundation Pregnancy Care Center Pastoral Board, and chairman of IMPACTO, Luis Martinez Spanish Ministries. He is married to Tina Allen Hilson and they have three sons. He is a native of North Carolina and has lived in Maryland since January of 1999.

Karen Hughes
Under Secretary, Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes leads America’s efforts to communicate with foreign publics and confront ideological support for terrorism. As one of the State Department’s top officials, she leads several thousand public diplomacy employees worldwide, oversees the bureaus of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Public Affairs and International Information Programs, and participates in foreign policy development. During her tenure, public diplomacy has become a national security priority that is now viewed as central to the work of America’s diplomats worldwide. Hughes aggressively expanded public diplomacy and international communications programs, won increased funding for them and initiated numerous innovations and institutional changes.

Ambassador Hughes’ current work in public diplomacy and public affairs follows her work as a longtime advisor to President Bush. She served as Counselor to the President for his first 18 months in the White House. As Counselor, she was involved in major domestic and foreign policy issues, led the communications effort in the first year of the war against terror, and managed the White House Offices of Communications, Media Affairs, Speechwriting and Press Secretary.

Ambassador Hughes returned to Texas in 2002 but continued to serve as an informal advisor to the President and was a communications consultant for his 2004 re-election campaign. She is the author of Ten Minutes from Normal, the story of her experiences working for President Bush, and she helped write the President’s autobiography, A Charge to Keep.

Ambassador Hughes is a former Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas and a former television news reporter for KXAS-TV, the NBC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth. Mrs. Hughes is a Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Southern Methodist University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Journalism. She is a wife and mother and an elder in the Presbyterian Church.

Ambassador James Kimonyo
Republic of Rwanda

H.E. James Kimonyo is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Rwanda to the United States of America and non-resident Ambassador to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Prior to his current appointment, Ambassador Kimonyo was Rwanda’s Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa and non-resident Ambassador to Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana, Angola, The Kingdom of Swaziland, Lesotho and Namibia where he served for two years.

Ambassador Kimonyo has been instrumental in the political and social reforms of Rwanda for the past 13 years where he has held many positions. Prior to his diplomatic career. Ambassador Kimonyo served as Governor of Kibungo and Butare Provinces respectively. As Governor, he was directly involved in efforts to enhance peace and stability at the provincial level as well as facilitating the unity and reconciliation process. Ambassador Kimonyo has also been actively involved in the resettlement programs of former Rwandan refugees. He served as Director of Resettlement with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Communal Development and Resettlement and Country Director of the UN Habitant for Humanity with the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement Ambassador Kimonyo holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering.

Jo Anne Lyon
President
World Hope International, Inc.

Dr. Jo Anne Lyon is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of World Hope International, Inc., a faith-based relief and development organization (WHI) alleviating suffering and injustice in thirty countries around the world. Since its inception in 1996, WHI has championed projects in the fields of education, enterprise and community health. The purpose of WHI is captured in its Mission Statement: “To the hungry, we offer life. To the forgotten, we offer opportunity. To the outcast, we offer dignity. To the desperate, we bring hope.” With core values of transformation, empowerment, sustainability, and collaboration, WHI strives to meet the challenges offered in God’s word concerning meeting the needs of the oppressed through its Signature Microfinance, HIV/AIDS, and Anti-Trafficking Programs. As the CEO of World Hope International, Dr. Lyon has traveled in over 50 countries as a lecturer, performing site assessments and organizing development projects. A licensed professional counselor, she had 30 years prior experience in administering domestic urban and rural human service programs before founding World Hope International. WHI has been a recipient of PEPFAR funding since October 2004.

Following a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Lyon went on to receive a Master’s degree in counseling from the University of Missouri. She pursued further graduate studies in historical theology from St. Louis University, and has received an honorary doctorate in divinity from United Wesleyan College and an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Southern Wesleyan University. Dr. Lyon has assisted the faculties of Asbury Theological Seminary and Indiana Wesleyan University as an adjunct professor of church and society. She serves on many boards, most recently Bread for the World, and for almost 20 years, the Houghton College Board of Trustees. Dr. Lyon is one of the founding members of Evangelicals for Social Action, and she currently serves as the vice-chair of ESA’s Board of Directors. She has been published in both professional journals and popular reading sources, specifically in areas regarding faith and global issues. As a result, she is in demand as a speaker in academic, governmental and religious venues. Dr. Lyon was also recently appointed by the Virginia House of Delegates Speaker to the Virginia Commission on the Prevention of Human Trafficking. She is an ordained minister of the Wesleyan Church. Dr. Lyon and her husband, the Rev. Wayne Lyon, have four children and five grandchildren.

Marty McGeein
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning & EvaluationU.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Marty McGeein is the principal deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services. She also serves as the executive director of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) which provides recommendations regarding programs and policies intended to anticipate and respond to the world’s HIV/AIDS epidemic to the President and the Secretary.

Ms. McGreen has previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Disability, Aging, and Long Term Care Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. She also led HHS’s involvement in the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act.
Prior to joining HHS, Ms. McGeein was president and CEO of The McGeein Group, a policy design and strategic resource management group. Before that, she was executive vice president of the National Council of Community Hospitals (NCCH). She joined NCCH after serving for six years in the White House under President Ronald Reagan. Prior to her White House service, McGeein was nurse manager at Holy Cross Hospital, Silver Spring, Maryland.

Heidi Metcalf
Vice President
Geneva Global

Heidi Metcalf directs Geneva Global’s (GG) office in Washington, D.C., and has 14 years of experience spanning the private, public and nonprofit sectors. She previously was executive director of partnership for the Future, a business and education partnership based in Richmond, Virginia. Heidi served as policy advisor to the governor of Virginia and was an account manager with Cincinnati, Ohio-based Procter & Gamble. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a master’s in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Ms. Metcalf is GG’s Global Director of Public Private Partnerships, and her responsibilities include oversight of all GG’s technical relationships. As the director of the Washington office, Heidi brokers public private partnerships (PPP) for GG’s private clients interested in pursuing innovative and leveraged ways to address international development opportunities. In addition to several anti-trafficking PPP’s, her portfolio includes a PEPFAR funded project through the New Partners Initiative that leveraged significant private resources to bundle indigenous community and faith-based programs to provide prevention and care services to hundreds of thousands of people in Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire.

Kay Warren
Executive Director, HIV/AIDS Initiative
Saddleback Church

Kay Warren is using her far-reaching influence as a voice for the weak and vulnerable. In 2002, Warren became, in her words, “seriously disturbed” by the suffering of the millions infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. Now she is challenging the worldwide Church to take on not just AIDS, but the global giants of spiritual darkness, lack of servant leaders, poverty, disease, and ignorance through the P.E.A.C.E. Plan.

Warren frequently travels around the globe to engage with HIV positive men, women, and vulnerable children, and today she is a powerful advocate on their behalf. In 2004, she began the HIV/AIDS Initiative at Saddleback Church and serves as its executive director. In 2005, she was instrumental in presenting Saddleback Church’s first HIV/AIDS conference; the Global Summit on AIDS and the Church is now an annual event. Warren launched the HIV/AIDS Caring Community at PurposeDriven.com/HIV in 2006. The online community offers resources and inspiration for churches involved in HIV/AIDS ministry.

As a two-time cancer survivor, Warren knows firsthand how a life-threatening diagnosis alters one’s daily life. Her own bouts with suffering have motivated her to serve others who are sick. She has come face to face with the hurting as a volunteer in her own community; at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in Kolkata, India; at the leper colony and AIDS hospice in Manila, Philippines; and with World Vision and International Justice Mission in Thailand and Cambodia. In Africa, she’s ministered to those living with HIV/AIDS through several organizations, as well as through Saddleback Church’s partnership with churches and government leaders in Rwanda. She has become a student of AIDS and attended the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, and the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

As a speaker, Warren has been a voice for suffering individuals. In addition to being featured at various Purpose Driven church growth conferences, Warren has addressed many government, church, and professional groups, including the Government Women Leaders of Rwanda, the Management Association of the Philippines, and the Learning Community of Willowcreek Church. Recognized for her passion and influence, Warren has spoken to The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (UNAIDS) and at the ecumenical pre-conference of the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto.
In 2006 Warren was among eight women honored at the CNN Inspire Summit, which recognized women for their impact on global issues through political, social, and humanitarian efforts that have inspired others to get involved. An accomplished writer, Warren contributed to The aWake Project – Uniting Against The African AIDS Crisis. Her doctrinal study, Foundations, co-authored with Tom Holladay, won a Gold Medallion Award in 2004. Her new book, Dangerous Surrender, will be released in fall, 2007. Additionally, she has written for CNN.com. Kay has been featured in POZ, Guideposts, Today’s Christian Woman, Missions Mosaic, Sojourner’s, Seed, Good, and OC Metro.

Rick Warren
Pastor
Saddleback Church

Dr. Warren is a global strategist, innovator, author, philanthropist, and pastor. As a global strategist, Dr. Warren advises leaders in the public, private, and faith sectors on, poverty, health, education, corruption, leadership development, and faith and ethics in culture. As a pastor, he founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, with one family in 1980. As an innovator he built the Purpose Driven Network, a global alliance of over 400,000 pastors from in 162 countries and hundreds of denominations who have been trained by Warren. As an author, he wrote The Purpose Driven Life, the bestselling hardback in American history, according to Publisher’s Weekly. It has sold 30 million copies in English and was the best-selling book in the world for 3 years, in over 50 languages. As philanthropists, Rick and Kay Warren give away 90 percent of their income through three charities: Acts of Mercy, which serves people with AIDS, Equipping Leaders, which trains leaders in developing countries sand The Global PEACE Fund, which fights poverty, disease, corruption, and illiteracy using local congregations. Warren was born in San Jose, California. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from California Baptist University, a master of divinity from Southwestern Theological Seminary, and a doctor of ministry degree from Fuller Theological Seminary. Rick and his wife, Kay, live in Trabuco Canyon, California and have three children.

Robert Zachritz
Director of Advocacy & Government Relations
World Vision

Robert Zachritz is director of the World Vision office of advocacy and government relations. His primary areas of specialty for World Vision include global health, HIV/AIDS, agriculture development, international food aid, advocacy around the annual meetings of the G-8, and the congressional appropriations process. Prior to joining World Vision, Mr. Zachritz worked for almost 15 years within the U.S. Congress for both Republican and Democratic Members of Congress. Most recently, he served as Rules Committee associate and foreign policy advisor to Rep. Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio), who went on to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. organizations in Rome. Mr. Zachritz also worked for Representatives Fred Upton (R-Michigan) and Dick Cheney (R-Wyoming).