New York Times: Mothers Helping Mothers to Live With HIV
Tina Rosenberg, author and former editorial writer for the New York Times

“…[Mothers2mothers (m2m)] trains and pays mentor mothers in six African countries to work with pregnant women and new mothers, largely in clinics and hospitals. … M2m, which now gets half its money from United States government anti-AIDS programs, is not the only organization that uses HIV-positive mothers as peer mentors, but it is by far the largest, and probably the only one that pays them salaries. M2m and its local partners have helped several governments — in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa — to establish similar mentor mother corps, and they still work closely with the Kenyan national and South African provincial programs. … But given [mother mentor programs’] value, they are nowhere near as widespread as they should be. The problem is that to be effective, the mothers must be paid — and regardless of how much the program saves later, money is a problem now…” (7/16).