Designing Hope is committed, through its projects and since its inception, to promote social inclusion.
especially dedicated to HIV+ women.
The association develops anti-stigma campaigns and, at the same time, income-generating activities to facilitate their social reintegration and help them meet the needs of their families.


  • Anti-stigma campaigns

HIV testing is required for pregnant women, not for spouses.
This has caused considerable family drama in southern Africa, with many women testing HIV-positive and then being abandoned by their husbands, who often refused to question their own serostatus.
The result, particularly in the early 1980s, was dramatic situations for these women, without resources, with a newborn baby and sometimes other dependent children to raise alone.
With its campaign “I Love You Positive or Negative”, Designing Hope wanted to send these women a message of hope, that love did not stop at a positive or negative sign, and that they could nevertheless rebuild their lives.
A message also for men to change their mentality and face the reality of this pandemic head on, rather than breaking up their families and remaining in the unknown as to their own status, when treatment was available to fight the virus


  • Income Generating Activities – Fashion Designing Hope

In parallel to these campaigns aiming to change mentalities, Designing Hope has also developed generating activities to give immediate support to these women.
This is how the ” Fashion Designing Hope ” project was born in 2003, with a multitude of creative projects, sponsored by the big names in fashion, to entrust the women with the realisation of original creations, sold for the benefit of the association. The last born of this project, Thebe Magugu’s Porte-Bonheur, will be presented by the Bon Marché Rive Gauche in February 2021.



  • Income-generating activities – Local opportunities


Over the years, the sewing workshop has been perfected: the women, equipped with machines to
sewing professionals were able to develop their skills. The women also work for the local market through projects with local and social outlets (school uniforms given to orphaned children as part of the “Uniform and Difference” project, covid-19 masks distributed free of charge at the Piggs Peak Hospital in Eswatini etc.).


  • Nutritional support to the HIV positive patients

Designing Hope has set up nutritional support projects for HIV-positive people.
In Eswatini, the NGO is involved in the daily distribution of meals for patients coming to the hospital to collect their treatment. This programme has evolved with the number of patients, increasing from 240 in 2005 to 4,500 in 2021. In 2018, Dessine l’Espoir modified its support protocol to focus on the weakest patients, setting up the distribution of parcels containing vegetables and basic ingredients for 50 targeted patients. This plays an important role in helping the weakest patients regain their strength by providing them with an essential food supplement. It replaces the World Food Fund’s “Food By Prescription” programme, which gave a food basket to the weakest patients and which was discontinued in 2018. Vegetables are supplied through the association’s gardens for cabbages, salads and spinach. Recourse to the local market is also
necessary to fill the gaps in the garden.