The AIDS epidemic has destroyed the fabric of the African community, with many households headed by grandmothers caring for 5 or more orphans.

In order to help a sick child recover completely, it is important to supplement the medicines with food and nutrition. Since these grandmothers usually do not have a permanent source of income, and struggle against odds to provide regular food or support to the family, we realized early in our work that if we were to succeed in making a real difference in the lives of all the HIV+ children we had to make sure the grandmothers had a regular source of income.

Through microfinance, poor women get loans to start a business to gnerate income and over time as the business grows, they repay their loans. In developing our Microfinance Tools in AIDS Care (MTAC) program, Power of Love had to take into account the special circumstances of the loan recipients - many would die during the loan process, all of them spent a large part of their day in providing care to one or more sick children, the fact that they were themselves aging grandmothers. Unlike traditional microfinance programs, we decided to focus not just on successful loan repayment but on proof positive that the loan recipients’ lives were being improved.

All the loan recipients are women and have at least one child who is HIV positive. Second, most of the loan recipients have children who are HIV positive and are enrolled in Power of Love's ARC (Arms Reach Care) program. The ARC program provides the children with food, medicines, weekly health check-ups from the Community Health worker/Nurse, psychosocial counseling, and other life saving services.

MTAC provides women caregivers with microloans and training to engage in income-generating activities. As a result of the businesses started with loan money, the diet of families has improved significantly with many women reporting that they can now afford 2-3 meals a day as opposed to a single meal before they started the business.

The women are also saving a small amount each week as personal savings and have their own passbooks to record their savings.

Some of the businesses started by the loan recipients are:

• Manufacture of tie-dye material;
• Sale of fresh fish;
• Sale of dressed chickens;
• Sale of live chickens;
• Sale of hardware;
• Sale of used clothing;
• Sale of charcoal;
• Sale of Mealie meal (a Zambian staple food);
• Sale of dry fish.