Absolute Return for Kids (ARK)

Trustees’ report for the year ended 31st August 2009

Trustees’ Annual Report and Accounts For the Year Ended 31 August 2009

Objectives and principal activities
ARK is an international charity whose purpose is to transform children‟s lives. It was founded in 2002 by senior figures in the alternative investment industry. With a shared vision of collective philanthropy, ARK delivers high social returns on philanthropic investment.
ARK has a highly committed board of trustees who use their skills and experience to support ARK‟s activities. Along with ARK‟s patrons, the trustees ensure that all administrative costs are covered, so that 100% of all donations go directly to deliver ARK‟s programmes for children.
ARK identifies, creates and delivers innovative and highly effective programmes in the areas of HIV/AIDS (South Africa, Mozambique), Education (UK, India) and Children in Care (Eastern Europe) that are transformative, scalable and sustainable. ARK applies the same principles and disciplines to managing the charity as it would to running a business, focusing on the transformation of children‟s lives through rigorous research, monitoring and evaluation.
HIV/AIDS
ARK‟s HIV/AIDS programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa aim to prevent children from becoming prematurely orphaned by keeping their HIV+ mothers and caregivers alive. The objectives of the primary programmes in South Africa and Mozambique are to:
save lives – rapidly and effectively providing antiretroviral therapy (ART) to the parents and carers of children, and to children themselves, and;
build capacity – ensuring that governments and communities are able, through ARK‟s involvement, to provide HIV treatment in an effective and sustainable way, with the appropriate resources, processes and systems.
ARK‟s programmes are delivered through government clinics. ARK works to build the human resource and physical capacity of these clinics to enable them to enrol patients from their local communities onto ART and provide long-term treatment options. ARK initially helps run treatment programmes in clinics, building systems and processes to ensure sustainable quality of care prior to hand over to local government or other local service providers.
An agreement was successfully concluded on 1 October 2009 to transfer the majority of the ARK programmes in South Africa to Kheth‟Impilo, a local non-governmental organisation. This is further explained in the „Achievements‟ section of the report, below.
Also in South Africa:
ARK‟s Grant Access Strategy supports vulnerable children in AIDS affected communities by assisting their parents or caregivers to access government-funded social care grants, such as child support and foster care grants.
In August 2008, ARK initiated a study to demonstrate improved prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services in South Africa, as well as integrated PMTCT service delivery alongside ART services.
Also in Mozambique:
The Clinton-ARK Initiative for Mozambique (CAIM) is a partnership with the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, seeking to enhance training and mentoring of health care workers in Mozambique, with particular focus on HIV/AIDS. CAIM is redeveloping the Chicumbane medical training centre to enable it to increase its capacity for teaching medical technicians and other critical health-care workers. It has also launched a pilot programme to test the viability of new Point of Care Technologies for HIV/AIDS treatment management.
ARK launched the Young Doctors Programme in partnership with the University of Eduardo Mondlane to help build capacity at ARK sites, while providing essential mentoring of new doctor graduates in HIV management.

Achievements, performance and future plans HIV/AIDS

Since 2003 ARK has benefited over 146,000 children in South Africa and Mozambique, helping to shield them from the worst effects of the AIDS crisis.

In South Africa:
By end of August 2009 ARK had initiated 56,749 mothers, caregivers and children onto treatment (comprising 65% of all patients enrolled at ARK-supported clinics). This was 16% ahead of target to date.
ARK has in the lifetime of the programme supported 93 clinics to set up treatment programmes.
83% of patients in ARK-supported clinics remain on treatment at 24 months compared to South Africa‟s national average of 62%.
The Grant Access Programme had supported 30,977 grant applications by the end of August 2009. This programme exceeded its overall programme target of 21,000 grant applications as early as February 2009, 19 months ahead of schedule.
The PMTCT study enrolled 130 mother and baby pairs. As a result of programme changes, this study has now been halted, but existing patients will continue to be supported as long as is needed.
Since 2003, ARK has played a vital role in accelerating high quality access to antiretroviral (ART) treatment for people living with HIV in South Africa.
The sustainability of programmes that ARK initiates is fundamental to programme strategy and design. In the case of ARK‟s ART programme in South Africa, it was originally intended that government would take over running the services in its clinics after 3-5 years. Due to resource constraints, it became clear that the government would be unable in the near future to absorb the services that ARK provided.
To ensure the sustainability of treatment, ARK negotiated to hand over its clinics and community services to Kheth‟Impilo, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO). From 1 October 2009, the ART and Grant Access programmes were transferred to Kheth‟Impilo, together with the majority of the employees of ARK (South Africa) Limited as part of a planned exit.
The continuation of these services by Kheth ‟Impilo is primarily funded by the US President‟s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR had been a funder of ARK‟s programme for a number of years, and as part of the sustainability agreement previously planned PEPFAR funding for ARK will be granted to Kheth‟Impilo. To assist in continuity of service, ARK will also provide bridge funding over a two year period, after which its funding will cease.
In Mozambique:
ARK‟s programme in Mozambique aims to train and mentor clinic staff in the provision of ART and in so doing build capacity of government clinics while increasing patient access to life- saving treatment.
ARK‟s ART Programme plans to enrol 4,500 mothers and caregivers, and 500 children on HIV treatment by the end of 2011. By August 2009 the programme had started to support integrated HIV services at 4 clinics in Maputo Province, initiated 1,967 patients onto ART including 1,385 mothers, caregivers and children.
The Young Doctors Programme was launched with an initial cohort of 5 doctors.

Planning progressed for the redevelopment of the Chicumbane medical training centre in Gaza Province as part of CAIM. This will ultimately facilitate the training of a further 360 medical technicians and other health care workers by 2015.
Each of these programmes has progressed significantly during the year, in difficult conditions in Mozambique. The shortage of HIV qualified health workers in particular is acute.
Education
ARK supports three major programmes in the UK: ARK Schools, Future Leaders and Teaching Leaders, and one in India: School Leaders for India.
ARK Schools:
By 2012 ARK aims to be running twelve academies eventually providing places for more than 12,000 pupils.
ARK has now opened eight academies, which are currently impacting the lives of almost 4,500 pupils.
Three new ARK schools opened during the year – Ark Academy (in Brent), Globe Academy (Southwark) and Evelyn Grace Academy (Lambeth).
Two more (Charter Academy, Portsmouth and St Alban‟s Academy, Birmingham) progressed through the feasibility stage during the year and opened in September 2009 immediately after the year-end. King Solomon Academy opened its secondary school and Burlington Danes Academy opened its sixth form in September 2009 just after the year-end. A further Academy in Ilford is under development and due to open in 2012.
The existing ARK academies achieved a third year of improvement in GCSE performance. The percentage of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A*- C including English and mathematics rose to 50% at Burlington Danes Academy (2008, 42%), 45% at Walworth Academy (2008, 37%) and 34% at Globe Academy, just nine months after opening (2008, 26% at predecessor school). Since they opened as ARK academies, these three schools have achieved a weighted average annual increase in their rate of achievement of five GCSEs including English and maths of 7.7% – above national improvement rates.
Future Leaders:
The Future Leaders programme, launched in 2006 with a Cohort of 20 participants, is currently training 156 Future Leaders, who are working across at least 100 urban challenging schools.
The programme operates in London and the North West and in September 2009 expanded to the West Midlands.
This year, four participants gained head teacher status at least one year ahead of schedule.
Estimates that at least 100,000 pupils are in schools that benefit from one or more Future Leaders.
Teaching Leaders:
The Teaching Leaders programme, launched in 2008, now has recruited 80 participants across 53 complex urban schools and aims to train more than 300 middle leaders in each cohort by 2014.
One year on Teaching Leaders is making a positive impact with one third of participants already being promoted and Teaching Leaders outperforming their school averages by one grade.

Company Number: 4589451 Charity Number: 1095322
The trustees are pleased to present their report together with the audited financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31st August 2009.
Reference and administrative details
Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England, number 4589451, and is a UK registered charity, number 1095322.
Directors
The directors of the charitable company are its trustees for the purpose of charity law and the members of the company limited by guarantee. Throughout this report they are collectively referred to as the trustees.
The following individuals served as trustees during the year:
Arpad Busson (Chairman to June 2009) Stanley Fink (Chairman from June 2009) Paul Dunning
David Gorton
Kevin Gundle
Paul Marshall
Jennifer Moses
Michael Platt (from June 2009) Blaine Tomlinson
Ian Wace
All trustees served for the full year, except where noted above, and no trustees have resigned or been appointed since the year end. None had any beneficial interest in the charity and remuneration of directors is neither paid by the charity nor permitted under its Articles of Association.
Managing Director
Paul Bernstein
Auditors
Ernst & Young LLP
1 More London Place London SE1 2AF
T: +44 20 7951 2000
Bankers
HSBC Private Bank (UK) Limited 78 St James‟s Street
London SW1A 1JB
T: +44 20 7860 5000
Solicitors
McDermott Will & Emery UK LLP 7 Bishopsgate,
London EC2N 3ARA
T: +44 20 7577 6900
Registered Office
15 Adam Street London WC2N 6AH T: +44 20 7395 2050

Read the whole publication for yourself

https://arkonline.org/sites/default/files/ark_final_signed_accounts_2008-09_ye_31aug09_v2_.pdf