For Irene, an eventual visit to a mothers2mothers clinic, which helps women living with HIV, helped her turn her life around. The training and support she received there restored her self-esteem and helped her educate her family on HIV in a way that allayed their fears.

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Today, mothers2mothers employs more than 1,700 Mentor Mothers like Irene, in hundreds of health facilities and communities in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Known as m2m, our Mentor Mother Model has been proven to dramatically improve health outcomes among women and babies.

Since being founded in 2001, m2m has almost entirely eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV among our clients, with nearly 98 percent of babies born in the program testing negative at the final 18-month HIV test.

Mothers like Irene are game changers. They are employed to educate their communities about HIV and help other HIV-positive mothers overcome the challenges of living with the virus — experiences they know firsthand all too well.

And it was exactly their extraordinary bravery and spirit that compelled me to become involved in the organization.

In February of 2004, the death of my best friend Karen sparked a sea change in my life. During the two weeks she was in the hospital after complications from routine shoulder surgery, her brother Mitch Besser, an OB/GYN volunteering in South Africa, told me about the work he was doing to educate pregnant women on how to prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies. The goal was to end pediatric AIDS. With Karen’s death, I sank into depression and he invited me to come see the work.

The first day in Cape Town, I accompanied Mitch on hospital rounds and fell head over heels in love with the women who were working for this cause. One after another, they told stories of tragedy, heartbreak and hopelessness. Yet none of them gave in. They sang, they laughed, they endured — and they gave me hope.