Mission

The principal objective of Mothers for All is to provide income-generation projects and lifeskills training for the caregivers of children made vulnerable or orphaned by AIDS. By giving caregivers support and training the trust aims to enable the generation of a sustainable income, benefiting both the women and the children within their care. The women will receive money for the products they are taught to make, which will be sold both in Botswana and internationally. Eventually, some of the trained caregivers will graduate to become trainers for newly recruited caregivers. With time, the training will also expand to permaculture and food cultivation, as well as an environmental awareness programme. Wherever possible, we also seek to facilitate the meeting of women in similar situations, who can enjoy and benefit from the opportunity to share experiences, problems and knowledge.

The Mothers

Mothers for All aims to help these children by helping their caregivers, a strategy widely considered to be the most broad and sustainable way of helping orphans. We therefore focus on women - the principal caregivers in Botswana - who meet the following criteria:

• HIV-positive mothers caring for both HIV-negative and HIV-positive children
• Women who are caring for orphans or vulnerable children who are not their own – this includes grandmothers looking after orphaned grandchildren, women caring for their orphaned siblings’ children, and women who adopt, foster or support orphans and vulnerable children in any way.