Orphans, Children and Others Living with AIDS in Africa - Darius Mans, President

The Northern Virginia Ethical Society (NoVES) (https://esnv.org) devotes one Sunday morning each year to a speaker from Africare (https://www.africare.org), followed by a collection for the benefit of Africare. For each of the past five years NoVES, despite our small size, has collected sufficient funds to finance two of Africare's local Service Corps volunteers.

In June 2002, Africare launched its HIV/AIDS Service Corps (https://www.africare.org/programs/HIVAIDS/overview.php): an innovative program that enlists grassroots-level Africans — such as parents, adolescents and teachers — as volunteers in the fight against HIV/AIDS Africa-wide. Like the Peace Corps, the Africare HIV/AIDS Service Corps relies on volunteers; each volunteer has a specific scope of work; training, oversight and support are provided to all volunteers; and they receive stipends, as opposed to salaries, for their work. What is unique about the Africare program is that the volunteers are neither Americans nor Europeans nor expert professionals of any nationality, but Africans who share their time, energy and compassion to reduce the AIDS devastation in the communities in which they live.

The first HIV/AIDS Service Corps volunteers are now active in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. Initially, they learned the medical facts about HIV and AIDS and received training in home-based care of AIDS sufferers, AIDS orphan support, and communications, peer education and other HIV-prevention strategies. With modest stipends of up to $50 per volunteer per month — and a bicycle each – they’ve taken off. Some 60 HIV/AIDS Service Corps volunteers have been deployed to date. With increased donor funding, Africare hopes to have HIV/AIDS Service Corps volunteers in every African country.

Darius Mans assumed the position of President of Africare on January 4, 2010. Prior to joining Africare, Mr. Mans served as Acting Chief Executive Officer of Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Mr. Mans has over 30 years of development experience with a major focus on African countries.

Prior to being tapped as Acting Chief Executive Officer for MCC, Mr. Mans was the organization’s Vice President of Implementation where he oversaw the strategic and operational approaches of MCC’s entire compact implementation portfolio of over $6.3 billion in 18 countries. Mans also served as MCC’s Managing Director for Africa, where he drove an increase in commitments to Africa by $1.6 billion.

Before joining MCC, Mr. Mans held various positions at the World Bank including Director of the World Bank Institute (WBI) in Washington, DC, responsible for its programs in WBI’s 45 countries around the world. Mr. Mans was also the World Bank’s Country Director in Mozambique, where he designed and implemented a five-year program focused on infrastructure and private sector development. Mans also led the re-engagement of the World Bank to Angola, providing analytical and advisory services and $125 million in lending to Angola following the end of the country’s 27-year civil war.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Mans was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the United States Treasury and the International Monetary Fund to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Mr. Mans was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America, and consulted on macroeconomic policy and strategic planning.

Mr. Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Mathematics from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he was born. A long-time resident of Washington D.C., he is married and the father of three children.