By Albina du Boisrouvray
To understand the revolution that was the FXB method, we need to go back to its origins. It all began in 1991, when I decided to export to Africa the program I had already built in the United States: The FXB House. It offered much more than medical care for AIDS orphans, who were themselves infected. It was based on the concept of Tender Loving Care - the conviction that these children will have a better and longer life if they grow up in a family environment, surrounded by tenderness and benefiting from attentive care.
In Washington, then in Thailand, Colombia and Brazil, we created "FXB Houses" in which AIDS-infected orphans were surrounded by a team of care professionals who acted as their new family. This program put into action Dr. Jonathan Mann's paradigm of the inextricable links between access to basic rights and health. With FXB, my ambition was to replicate this program in Uganda.
But when we arrived on the scene, we discovered a very different reality: unlike in the USA, the orphans were multiple cohorts, often cared for, according to African custom, by the extended family or community. And these people lived in a context of extreme poverty and disease, aggravated by AIDS, which often prevented them from working, and without access to basic rights.
It quickly became clear to me that, if we were to help the children effectively, we urgently needed to help their parents and loved ones.
In discussions with the families, I decided to create a new program that was as close as possible to their needs and realities. It seemed obvious to me that the urgent need was to get them out of this extreme poverty and into economic self-sufficiency as quickly as possible, so that they could become active players in the local economy.
To do this, we had to innovate, shake up established models and be creative, because at the time, the great innovation and the unavoidable obligation in development circles was the idea of micro-credit by Professor Mohammed Yunus - who, incidentally, won the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
The idea was to lend families a sum of money so that they could buy a work tool and start up a business to lift themselves out of poverty. The families then gradually repaid the loan and interest with the fruits of their labor.
I deeply admire this innovation, but it couldn't be applied in our case because the AIDS context made the situation extremely urgent: people affected by both AIDS and extreme poverty would never have the means to repay a loan.
At the same time, we didn't want to turn ourselves into a "bank". We wanted families to gain time in their economic success, so we invented a new method.
And from this transgression was born a revolution: instead of a loan, we offered each family the elements they needed to create their own business, with no repayment of capital or interest.
In addition to this initial economic gift, we have surrounded this program with the public health paradigm of Harvard professor Dr. Jonathan Mann.
Jonathan Mann's approach, which focuses on the inextricable link between health and access to basic human rights, was clear and visionary: public health can only have a lasting impact if the social and cultural factors - which increase the risk of disease and prevent people from accessing their essential rights - are addressed simultaneously: healthy housing, food, access to hygiene and health, and education.
By adding to these essential rights the economic aspect of donating an income-generating activity, FXB has transformed this public health paradigm into a development paradigm.
And so it was in Uganda, from 1990/1991, that we started the VillageFXB pilot project, which served as a laboratory for this method, which we then imported to Rwanda after the genocide and systematized into a methodology that we applied family by family.
The method is both simple and pioneering: in the first year, FXB simultaneously offers each family a company and access to all other essential rights.
FXB covers 100% of nutrition, education and health expenses for the first year of the program. This total coverage of these expenses frees families from financial worries and the struggle for daily survival. With their basic needs assured, they can embark on projects with the energy they need to improve their self-sufficiency. As one woman in the DRC put it so well: "Now I can sleep soundly, I know FXB is there".
In the second year, FXB offers only 75% of these expenses from the family budget, and in the third year only 50%. Initially, this approach enabled families to achieve economic self-sufficiency by the fourth year. Today, thanks to the evolution of the VillageFXB model, they become economically self-sufficient after three years, and can themselves provide for the children by participating in the local economy and continuing to prosper after the project ends.
Studies have shown an exceptional success rate: 86% of the beneficiaries of these FXB Villages have been lifted out of extreme poverty and remain so 4 years after the project's end.
In "The Cost of inaction ", Professor Sudhir Anand also demonstrated similar success figures by studying our VillageFXBs in Rwanda.
Amartya Sen, Harvard professor and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, has recognized the effectiveness of our work.
Researchers from the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA) also praised our method in their report:
"The FXB Villages show that strengthening a family's ability to provide for itself through integrated support leads to a lasting improvement in child well-being.
In 2003, after more than ten years of applying this method, I was congratulated by Professor Mohammed Yunus, the father of micro-credit. I still remember his blessing that day at the World Economic Forum in Davos, when he patted me on the arm and said: "Keep doing what you're doing!
Back in 2003, I reported on our approach and success in the columns of the International New York Times:
"Before launching a program in Uganda in 1990, I spent a lot of time in the villages asking people what was the best way to help them. They'd say, "If Pauline had a cow, she could put milk on the table and sell the surplus." "If Nite had seeds, she could plant vegetables and the children would eat better." "If Margaret had a little store, she'd take in another orphan." This approach has paid off. Modest grants of even $100 to the families concerned enable them to tackle these problems immediately."
It was in the 2000s that our method was taken up by major institutions like the World Bank and important organizations like the Ford Foundation and Brac World. It's unfortunate that some people sometimes forget the origins of this revolution and try to take credit for transgressive invention, but we're very proud and happy for the many beneficiaries.
This is the symbol that FXB has fulfilled its role as a small, innovative and pioneering NGO: inventing exemplary local programs that have subsequently been taken up by other organizations worldwide.