Canadian grandmothers helped raise more than $6 million to benefit community-based HIV/AIDS organizations through the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Leader-Post reports.

The foundation’s Grandmothers 4 Grandmothers campaign, which launched in 2006, currently has 10,000 members in over 200 chapters across Canada.

“The grannies are absolutely amazing, and you cannot imagine the grandmothers in Africa, how overwhelmed they are, that in a country they know nothing of, there are all these grandmothers who are supporting them and working with them,” says AIDS advocate Stephen Lewis, who launched the foundation in 2003. "They have become the most auspicious, most formidable, most loyal and most overwhelming, as grandmothers in bulk are very scary.”

According to the article, Lewis believes that progress in impeding the spread of HIV in Africa has been slow and treatment in the country remains “criminally incremental.” In the next five years, his foundation hopes to raise $100 million in an effort to improve the lives of those living with and affected by the epidemic in the continent.