organizations, researchers, and policy makers, these links are still fragile, and the Foundation is working to strengthen them.

In West Africa, a new organization called the Women's Health Organisation of Nigeria (WHON) provides training and technical assistance to selected women's organizations to help develop community-based reproductive health programs. Using participatory education methods to develop self-confidence, leadership, and long-term planning skills, WHON's immediate objective is to train community groups to identify problems and devise programs to help solve them.

In Bangladesh, Foundation grants support efforts to link health and credit programs for landless women. Here, too, an important dimension is participatory research by community members to identify and help solve health problems.

In Brazil, Foundation support has contributed significantly to the development of a leading NGO in the field of HIV/AIDS—the Grupo Pela Vidda (Group for Life). It has helped encourage a new attitude toward the disease in Brazil through innovative educational and social activities and by making available legal assistance to people with HIV/AIDS. Recently it created a special women's division to increase awareness that AIDS is not only a male disease and to relate it to other reproductive health issues.