Survivors Fund (SURF) received critical funding from Comic Relief in 2010 to support a two-year HIV+ Survivors Integration Project (SIP). SIP sought to extend holistic support through our two partner organisations AVEGA Agahozo and Solace Ministries to ensure the successful integration into the public health system of 1,375 HIV+ women survivors, as well as extending access to income-generating activities to 1,626 HIV+ women survivors, and sustain educational support to over 3,000 of their dependents.

An independent evaluation which assessed the impact of the project, concluded:

SIP has ably demonstrated the way in which judicious interventions in a complex policy and political context can mobilise potential within a disadvantaged population that is otherwise easily written off. SIP is important, not so much as a demonstration of what still remains to be done 18 years after the Genocide, but rather as a demonstration of just how much still can be done.

The pioneering approach to livelihood development established through SIP is now being extended by SURF in partnership with AVEGA AGAHOZO through the Widowed Survivors Empowerment Project (WSEP) and the Genocide Widows Empowerment Project (GWEP)

You can support this work as well, by making a donation here. Every donation is vital to enabling Survivors Fund (SURF) to extend its support through our partner organisations, including AVEGA Agahozo, to assist survivors of the genocide in Rwanda.