The Metropolitan Foundation has initiated and funded several projects since its inception in mid 2009. Below are a number of our larger projects. For a list of all our projects, please visit our Live the Future site.

B the Future Cellbook – the B the Future Cellbook is a pioneering tool in the fight against the HIV AIDS pandemic. Created in-house by the Foundation, it is a downloadable AIDS information booklet for use on cell phones. With the options to download in either English, Afrikaans, Xhosa or Zulu, this booklet provides all the information about prevention, treatment and care of HIV AIDS in easy and simply language. Requiring less than a minute to download, and permanently available on the cell phone thereafter, it requires neither a connections nor airtime to read.  It is essentially a virtually free HIV AIDS 100-page book, that can be read privately on any user’s cell phone.

Live the Future workshops and facilitator training – The Live the Future scenario tools created initially by Metropolitan and taken over by the Metropolitan Foundation has been widely lauded as one of the most effective tools in creating awareness, transferring knowledge and inspiring personal and group action.  In 2009 the Foundation created a program to take these models and plans on intervention based on them, to the broader community. Initially starting with a small group of accredited “Live the Future facilitators”, of all whom have extensive facilitation experience, these “stakeholder facilitators” have in turn begun to host workshops and action sessions across the Western Cape, with plans to extend into the Eastern Cape in early 2010. Any participant at these workshops can apply to become a “community workshop facilitator”. Both “stakeholder-” and “community” facilitators are paid by the Foundation, as well as all costs associated with hosting a workshop, either at our offices or in the community.

National HIV call centre and helpline – the Metropolitan Foundation is proud to have re-equipped Lifeline’s National AIDS call centre with new computer hardware. Identified as one of the most important support structures to the South African public, the Foundation intends to create a long-term partnership with the National HIV AIDS helpline whereby in collaboration with other knowledge and technology partners, we assist the call centre to maintain its service offering in lines with the latest technology advances, ensuring more people are reached than ever before.

SABCOHA Western Cape – Metropolitan has a proud history of being associated with SABCOHA (the South African Business Coalition on HIV AIDS). This relationship has strengthened further under the Metropolitan Foundation, through the funding of the SABCOHA Western Cape chapter, to be launched in early 2010. SABCOHA aims nationally to mobilise and assess South African business’s response to the pandemic. The creation of provincial chapters ensures greater engagement and a more intimate knowledge of how business is affected and responses differently to the disease, in each province.

Visit the Live the Future website to read more about our other projects.