It is widely agreed that the best way, the only way, to address effectively the needs of today’s 15 million AIDS orphans is through similar responses to the needs of the communities of the orphans1. It is further understood that there exist thousands of grassroots efforts in these same communities supporting these very children.2 However, there is an obstacle to this system’s success - overwhelming poverty with a rapidly diminishing population of able workers to provide money and manpower. Consequently, these communities and grass root organizations need money and training.

The primary objective is to adequately fund those grassroots and community-managed response efforts that best support orphaned and vulnerable children, allowing them to thrive and live to their fullest potential. The secondary objective is to build a connection of goodwill and compassion in support of the AIDS struggle through communication and the media.

The needs of these children are so compelling, but how do these vital but fractured grassroots community-managed groups access the funds from donors? How do compassionate major funders, who are eager to help, effectively and efficiently donate their resources to several community efforts? The Pendulum Project is one response; the fulcrum for swinging world opinion and resources toward meeting these compelling needs.

The founders of The Pendulum Project feel passionately that this is the day we need to turn this horrible human tragedy around. We believe there is a way to build that bridge – to pass the generous resources and goodwill of donors to those who are so obviously in need. We understand the complexities of the struggle and feel deeply for the immediate needs of these children who have been robbed of their childhood and who without help will be unable to ever realize their full potential. We know in our heart of hearts that the solutions to improving the lives of the children and orphans are not complicated, just vast in scale. Consequently The Pendulum Project is simple in design, powerful in its effect, efficient in its accountability.

The Pendulum Project is dedicated to helping the neediest of the needy, the millions of children who are orphaned and vulnerable due to HIV/AIDS and poverty. Pendulum is a small-scaled, philanthropic mechanism that connects individual financial contributors to those who can best use the resources. These beneficiaries will be the naturally occurring communities and organizations that are rising to the challenge of supporting AIDS-affected children and their caregivers.

The Pendulum Project facilitates and monitors the exchange of resources and goodwill, while setting up deep and meaningful relationships between philanthropists, not-for-profit organization leaders, government agencies and the beneficiaries with the child care communities who urgently need support. Pendulum links ordinary people who want to help with ordinary but vulnerable children who deserve the help. It does this through the following clear and efficient initiatives:

The Pendulum Project realizes its objectives through an integrated identification, funding and communication methodology.

• Mapping – Identifying where the  “community-managed responses” are. “Community Managed Responses” – what are they? Imagine that you are living in a community without the typical social service organizations that are often found in the West.  Furthermore, imagine that the adult neighbors around you all died, leaving their orphaned children, first, with only their grandmothers to care for them.  As the grandmothers begin to die, the remaining neighbors do the right thing and begin to take these orphans figuratively and literally into their own homes. Neighbors gather together in “community-managed responses” and may be seen as small intentional communities within communities. The Pendulum Project aims to identify and support these “community-managed responses” and we do this by working with the Ministry of Gender and Social Services, Network Organization working with Vulnerable and Orphaned Children (NOVOC), National Task Force on Orphans and Vulnerable Children, the Technical Working Group and Country Steering Group (UNAIDS, WFP and UNICEF).

• Costing - How much does it cost to care for a child for a year? Pendulum determines and compares the exact costs for caring across partner programs so that donated money will be appropriately allocated to those cared for by “community-managed response” mechanisms. Quarterly monitoring and audits by Pendulum staff will assure that resources have been used in ways for which they were intended.

• Campaigning for awareness - Putting images, audio and video of these children and community based programs into the minds and hearts of all global citizens and surrounding those images with hope, so that a potential donor and larger society might be awakened to action.

• Fund Raising – On the front end, Pendulum is a professional and efficient development organization. Its development efforts identify, educate and solicit major donations from individuals, organizations and foundations using face-to-face encounters between donors and Pendulum staff and volunteers. These efforts are augmented with Internet-based fundraising and speaking engagements to efficiently attract and sustain a stream of smaller donations.

Effective and sustained funding - Managing a vehicle for the effective pass through of funds and other essential resources from donors to recipients.  In addition to direct use of funds, some donors will use Pendulum as a means for endowing their donations, so that communities of orphans and vulnerable children may be sustained for years by the donor’s goodwill. Effective funding will be assured through Pendulum’s ongoing efforts to evaluate the use of Pendulum grants by the beneficiaries on a quarterly basis.

Strategic Alliances