Robin Smalley, Co-Founder and International Director at mothers2mothers
("m2m"),
took an unusual path to the non-profit world. Upon graduation from Tufts at a time when
there was no Communications and Media Studies minor offered, Smalley wanted to go into
TV production in order to promote social change and make a difference. As time went on,
the industry left Robin disillusioned as she produced work that she felt was not making
much of a social impact on viewers.
Her first entrepreneurial venture followed. Robin started her own consulting business,
in which she chose to work solely with non-profits. She directed videos, handled PR,
and did writing for a number of organizations. Consulting for non-profits led Smalley
to work with The Media Project: an organization that promotes the accurate depiction
of sexual health and youth issues in television. Robin took over as the Executive Director
and finally felt that she was really making a difference in the industry.
In 2004, Robin was presented with an opportunity in a field unrelated to anything she
had ever done before, and she immediately accepted the challenge. Dr. Mitch Besser,
a close family friend, introduced Robin to his idea for mothers2mothers:
an organization that would work to fight mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
Dr. Besser had seen first-hand a significant gap in the services provided for HIV
positive women in South Africa. Too often, women would get diagnosed and never return
to the hospital at which he volunteered, Groote Schuur Hospital; these women
"fell through the cracks" and without sufficient knowledge about HIV/AIDS,
would (often) pass the disease onto their children.
Dr. Besser had the idea, but did not know how to grow the organization;
Robin went to Cape Town to help carry out the vision. By the end of the first year,
the team had 73 sites established. Today, mothers2mothers operates over
540 sites in 7 countries across Africa, empowering women infected with HIV/AIDS
to combat the stigma associated with the disease. m2m created a sustainable model by training
HIV positive mothers as "mentor mothers." These mothers, in turn, help other HIV
positive pregnant women. These mothers are counseled on their pregnancies and status,
focusing on stigma reduction, medical interventions, nutrition, and reproductive health.
The women are then supported throughout the rest of their pregnancies by mothers2mothers.
The mothers are kept in the m2m program until the child is tested, resulting in
approximately 98% of the babies testing negative for HIV.
The organization has received positive feedback and warm receptions from the
communities in which it establishes sites. m2m members work to lighten the load
of the often-overburdened medical staff in the area. According to Smalley, m2m
offers "a warm, sustaining, caring environment for women that they don’t normally get"
in everyday society. Robin, Dr. Besser and the third co-founder, Gene Falk, have
successfully developed a means of decreasing mother-to-child transmission through
education and on-going support. m2m builds a foundation of trusting relationships
with the women, so that they can better learn and understand the importance of
available drugs, including Nevirapine and antiretroviral drugs. m2m has also
successfully decreased the number of cases of mother-to-child transmission by
teaching women about the best feeding options for where they live. According to
Robin, too few women in South Africa are aware of the importance of the feeding
type used, either formula feed or breast feeding. The highest rate of transmission
occurs when mixed feeding is used, that is, when a mother feeds her infant with
both breast milk and formula. Formula feed can irritate the child’s stomach lining,
making it easier for the virus to pass through once the child is breast fed.
Therefore, m2m makes sure to teach HIV positive women and all mentor mothers
about the importance of "exclusive feeding," using only one method based on the
mother’s available resources, such as clean water.
As an organization, mothers2mothers has won numerous prestigious
awards in recognition of the courageous and necessary work that it has
accomplished. c has been honored with the 2008 Skoll Entrepreneurial Award as well as the
2009 Schwab Foundation’s Social Entrepreneur Award. Likewise, mothers2mothers
is currently a finalist for the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, awarded
to a non-profit organization "that has made extraordinary contributions toward
alleviating human suffering anywhere in the world."
1 By the end of 2009, Robin
and her co-founders hope to bring the mothers2mothers program to Mozambique,
Uganda and Tanzania with the goal of preventing even more mother-to-child
HIV transmissions and eliminating the stigma associated with the disease.
Robin is inspired by the countless women who, when they first arrive at the
program, are so ashamed of their HIV status that they bow their heads in shame.
In only a few weeks, those same mothers hold their heads high, wear "HIV positive"
tee-shirts and are actively engaged in doing their best to erase the stigma that
so many women face.
From Tufts undergraduate to internationally-recognized social entrepreneur,
Robin Smalley clearly made the jump from Hollywood director to social
entrepreneur a successful one, and has taken her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to help many women lead fulfilling, stigma-free lives. For more information
about mothers2mothers and Robin’s efforts, visit
http://www.m2m.org/.
[1] Conrad N. Hilton Foundation,
http://www.hiltonfoundation.org/main.asp?id=38.
