Affiliate news: AFT wins $8 million grant for Africa AIDS project —
UUP’s national affiliate has secured a new $8 million grant for its
Africa AIDS program in South Africa.

The grant to the AFT is from President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a U.S. international health initiative that combats HIV/AIDS around the world. The union’s legislation and international affairs departments worked together to foster congressional discussions, and earned an eventual endorsement from U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.), chair of the Africa and Global Health Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose support was critical to the new funding. The project, launched in 2005, is a partnership between the AFT and the South African Democratic Teachers Union and other education unions in South Africa to provide workplace peer education, HIV testing, counseling and antiretroviral treatment for more than 2,000 educators. The project will be led by the Education Labour Relations Council, the unit that bargains with the South African government on teachers’ conditions of service, and will be supported by the U.S.-based Academy for Educational Development.