More than a decade after its founding, a nonprofit that aims to end neglected tropical diseases is working to integrate more African voices into its advocacy for increased funding, new board chair Tsitsi Masiyiwa told Devex.
Since 2012, The END Fund, a New York-based collaborative philanthropic fund, has been using the money and influence of its donors — including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and billionaire MacKenzie Scott — to partner with governments and community health groups to provide treatments for NTDs, which are a group of parasitic and bacterial infectious diseases that disproportionately affect Africans.
The END Fund is now working with more experts based on the African continent, which represents a “major shift generally in development and also in the philanthropic community,” Masiyiwa said.