Johnson & Johnson Health and Well-Being Grants

Senegal

Health is defined generally as freedom from physical disease or pain. Yet truly healthy children are not merely freeof illness; rather, the well child is one with an improved quality of life due to enhanced physical health, adequate emotional and economic support, access to educational resources, and environmentally sound surroundings. A child without these things is rarely ready to learn.

GFC’s grantee partners have witnessed firsthand the impact of childhood morbidity and mortality on community progress and the ways in which illness thwarts children’s ability to thrive, learn, and take advantage of life opportunities. GFC’s partners are calling increasingly for additional resources to address not only the education and welfare needs of the children they serve, but the health needs as well.

Recognizing the promise that an integrated and holistic approach holds for at-risk children around the world, GFC offers a $1,000 supplemental health grant to each appropriate grantee partner. The recipient organization uses its grant to address the most pressing health needs of the children it serves. Johnson & Johnson is the sole underwriter of these innovative and essential supplemental grants.

While the knowledge that GFC has acquired through this process is invaluable, so too is the work on behalf of children’s health that these grants are facilitating. These grants not only strengthen grantee partners’ health efforts, but also help these organizations have a greater impact on the children they serve by enabling a more holistic approach to the children’s well-being.

The uses of the Johnson & Johnson Health and Well-Being Grants include:

• Paying for regular showers at the local bathhouse in order to improve hygiene and prevent skin infections, and providing vitamin and calcium supplements (Achlal, Mongolia)
• Developing and training health promoters in a new mental health strategy for participants (Deporte y Vida, Peru)
• Providing free medical checkups and establishing a special fund to be used for frequent health and psychological emergencies (AFEL, Lebanon)
• Supporting yearly checkups for youth and monthly doctor visits to rural villages (Horn Relief, Somalia)
• Offering counseling sessions for participants and their families (TYHF, Georgia)
• Organizing quarry-based medical camps, training health volunteers, and purchasing first-aid kits for project sites (ACDS, India)
• Conducting dental hygiene training, mental health counseling, and tuberculosis prevention education (CEDOICOM, Brazil)
• Funding yearly immunizations and emergency services (Los Romeritos, Guatemala)
• Purchasing hygiene materials such as soap, shampoo, and dental supplies for participants, as well as providing preventive health education (Luna Nueva, Paraguay)
• Providing food, nutrition education, and immunizations, and constructing indoor European-style toilets (IIMP, Turkey)
• Testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and other infections, and conducting street theater productions addressing health-harming social practices such as female infanticide and child marriage (Sanghamitra, India)
• Constructing shower rooms, purchasing soap, and hiring a barber to cut the children’s hair and teach them how to keep their heads free of lice (EBCEF, Ethiopia)
  

Click below to read how grantee partners have used Johnson & Johnson Health and Well-Being Grants:
2002–2003 grants
2003–2004 grants
2004–2005 grants