South Africa: the strength of mothers
In South Africa, AIDS affects thousands of pregnant women and their children each year. Enel is supporting ONG Mothers2Mothers (M2M), which helps these young mothers to get cured and give birth to their children free from the HIV virus.
Thanks to the partnership with M2M, women living near the solar plant that Enel Green Power is building at Tom Burke are granted medical and psychosocial assistance following a sharing model that is as simple as it is innovative.
“In South Africa, 30% of expectant women are affected by the HIV virus and 43% of young mother and child deaths are due to AIDS.”
From one mother to the other
"We believe in the strength of mothers to beat pediatric AIDS". This is the core of Mothers2Mothers' vision, which documents how this statement is much more than a mere slogan.
After M2M encountered the first mother affected by HIV on 5 October 2001 at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, it assisted thousands of others in the whole of South Africa and in other eight countries of the continent.
Since its establishment until the present day, M2M has supported 1.3 million pregnant women in Africa. With its sharing method based on the role of the 'mentor mother', it has met with one woman out of four affected by AIDS in the countries where it operates.
“The strength of the 'mentor mother' is based on her ability to share: she has managed to give birth to a child free from the HIV virus and she places her experience at the disposal of other mothers in the community.”
This is also our spirit
The sharing of experiences on which the M2M programme is based is an example of the Creating shared value (CSV) model that is the basis for every activity we carry out in the countries in which we operate.
The partnership between Enel Green Power and Mothers2Mothers is one of the most striking and effective examples of our involvement with the life of communities. We share with M2M the certainty that the common and individual good originates from a plural commitment.
“Thanks to the partnership with Mothers2Mothers we help 13,785 women from the province of Limpopo, where our Tom Burke solar plant is located.”
M2M centres offer South African mothers prevention, education, medical care and especially the chance to share their needs and follow together the path that leads them to open up, curing themselves and their babies.
We want to help build a better future for all. Clean and sustainable energy is an instrument to achieve this goal and at the same time it offers us a great opportunity to open up our gaze to all the aspects of the daily life of the people we meet.