wfn.org | Graduate will help AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

May 6, 2002 News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71BP{204}

NOTE: A photograph of Rebekah Chilcote is available.

By Joyce DeGirolamo*

BEREA, Ohio (UMNS) - Upon graduating from college, Rebekah Chilcote isn't
going to find her place in the world. Instead, she is going to find children
living with AIDS half a world away.

Chilcote, 22, graduates this month from United Methodist-related
Baldwin-Wallace College and is preparing for a yearlong trip to Zimbabwe,
Africa, where about 220 people die daily from AIDS. She will be armed with a
degree in psychology and a grant from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. 

Her trip in August won't be a journey into the unknown. She already knows
what she will find: children whose parents have died of AIDS and some who
will themselves be infected with the deadly virus. The plight of Zimbabwe's
children will be familiar to Chilcote because she will be going "home"
again.

The child of United Methodist missionaries, she spent five years in Africa -
three in Kenya and two in Zimbabwe. Though she was only a teen-ager while in
Mutare, Zimbabwe, she remembers the language and the sights of the children
in the orphanage where she assisted her mother, a volunteer worker.

"When I was in Zimbabwe, my most favorite thing to do was to go to the
orphanage to play with the kids and take care of them," she recalls. "They
became like younger siblings, like family, to me."  

One boy, in particular, is still close to her heart. Aaron was a
three-month-old, AIDS-infected baby when she met him. He is no longer alive,
but he remains in her thoughts, and he was one of the reasons she wanted to
return to the orphanage at the Old Mutare Mission, where she will help the
children through research she will conduct as part of her Fulbright
Scholarship. The United Methodist Church operates the mission.      

"Being close to him and watching him go through the whole process (of
dying)," she explains, "was what got me thinking about how I could do
something to help these kids." She says it was through that experience and
the courses she took at Baldwin-Wallace, such as a sociology class titled
"Death and Dying," that led her to know she wanted to work with dying or
grieving children.

As a Fulbright scholar, Chilcote will focus her study on the use of art as a
therapeutic intervention when dealing with the emotional well-being of AIDS
orphans. By 2005, Zimbabwe will be home to 900,000 AIDS orphans who will be
impoverished, neglected and possibly ostracized from the community,
according to estimates.

The U.S. Student Program is designed to give recent college graduates,
master's and doctoral candidates, and young professionals and artists
opportunities for personal development and international experience,
according to the Fulbright Web site. Along with opportunities for
intellectual, professional and artistic growth, the program aims to promote
cross-cultural interaction and mutual understanding on a person-to-person
basis.

The opportunity in Zimbabwe combines everything Chilcote loves: children,
art, psychology and Zimbabwe. "I see this as a starting point for my whole
life in terms of the future and what I want to do. Personally and
academically, it's all the things I want to do. My passion is working with
these kids," she said. "The research is the path I can take to help them.
Everything I'm doing is focused on helping these kids."

While at Baldwin-Wallace College, Chilcote spent four years as a member of
the Voices of Praise gospel choir and was involved in student humanitarian
efforts in Honduras and Bahamas.  In April, she received the Dr. Delo C.
Grover Award in Psychology, given to an outstanding philosophy or psychology
student.
# # #
*DeGirolamo is the director of college relations for Baldwin-Wallace
College.

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United Methodist News Service
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