FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AFRICA'S AIDS ORPHANS: MAKING IT ON THEIR OWN TOGETHER -AND THRIVING Kids with a Business Plan: Innovative NGO Program Puts Self-Reliance and Relationships First
NAIROBI, KENYA,Tues Nov 28 - As the international community readies to observe the nineteenth World AIDS Day with the theme, "The Promise of Partnerships," one partnership growing across East Africa is a beacon of hope in the face of the pandemic.
It is a partnership of children orphaned by AIDS and child-headed households - who are making it on their own by working together.
In sub-Saharan Africa there are more than 11 million children now orphaned by AIDS. By 2010, UNICEF estimates the number will nearly double as more parents die. *
But today, across Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, nearly 18,500 of those orphaned children are learning how to cope on their own, build small businesses, and care for their younger siblings.
They're working together through the time-honed, grownup model of working collaboratives-with a little guidance from caring adults in their villages and the support of a program called Giving Hope. Sponsored by the global humanitarian agency Church World Service, the program plans to help 26,000 children in more than 5,300 child-headed households over the next three years. Church World Executive Director and CEO Rev. John L. McCullough says, "This is not the typical 'OVC care and support' plan (Orphans and Vulnerable Children in the humanitarian vernacular)." There are other programs for African AIDS orphans that focus primarily on keeping children in school, says McCullough. But, he says, the innovative Giving Hope program focuses first on keeping young families together by helping child heads of households become self-reliant-- through agricultura l, vocational and life-skills training, and by forming youth working groups, where kids help kids build houses, grow food, start small businesses, pool money and resources, extend micro-credit to one another, and help keep their younger siblings in school. "CWS and its African partners are seeing that the Giving Hope program has two main benefits," says McCullough. "It's restoring families and creating new family and social structures for child-headed households through the youth working groups approach, and it's building for the future of Africa's next generation."
In Nairobi, Church World Service East Africa Director Dan Tyler says that the program is helping adolescent orphans identify their existing skills and talents "and building new ones that will form the foundation of self-reliance. We're building the strengths of tomorrow's Africa," he says, "by working with the younger-and most vulnerable-generation."
Begun as a partnership of the YWCA Rwanda and Church World Service, the Giving Hope program is entering its fourth year in Rwanda. The program launched this year in Kenya and Uganda and is in its second year of activity in Tanzania.
All too often, older orphaned youths living in rural African areas- when suddenly faced with the responsibilities of caring for their younger siblings - will run off to the nearest city to eke out an existence. The Giving Hope program is changing that outcome for many.
Some youths are so buoyed by their successes in the Giving Hope program that they're adopting other orphans into their families.
Teams of Giving Hope program social workers are working with district governments who alert them to children in need. As the social workers begin to work with individual child-headed families, they provide a small amount of seed money, help the children form working groups, provide basic business training, help the groups select community income-generating projects, and serve as advisors and parental figures.
In Kagasa, outside Kigali, Rwanda, one rural working group of orphaned youths is now growing tomatoes as a joint project, learning how to establish and grow a business in the process. The income they're earning helps each young household head pay for family members' healthcare, school uniforms and materials for their younger siblings.
The Kagasa group includes 46 children and nine member households. Seven of those households are headed by children and two by community volunteers, or nkundabana (pronounced "hun-dah-bah-nah"), usually elder caregivers.
African kids developing business plans:
As other Giving Hope children's groups do, the Kagasa group established a mutual fund. But before they opened their account, they were required to do what any adult-run business does: They had to present a business plan.
The group's first tomato crop generated 50,000 Rwandan francs, just covering the original seed loan the Giving Hope program extended to them. But in four months, the group increased its income fourfold, shared the income, and each member household received 20,000 francs (approximately US $40) to begin their own activities Now each house has its own bank account.
Outside of Rwanda's capital Kigali, 20-year-old Evariste and his 17-year-ol d sister Christine run a small storefront business from their home. The dirt floor is swept clean, and tomatoes, potatoes, sacs of grain and batteries are assembled neatly on the shelves.
Evariste's growing business acumen shows up in a handwritten sign that says, "All loans tomorrow."
His Giving Hope youth working group helped construct the house and shelves. Paper cutouts hang from the ceiling as decorations from the store's inauguration.
"When Giving Hope staff had us meet other children," Evariste says, "we got new friends. We created our group and selected our advisors, and then were called to a training on creating a small business. I was asked to develop a proposal and to think of an idea.
"Because I was told I must do this on my own, I learned I had initiative. And now I am respected in my community. They are my customers. They come to visit me, as do friends from my group."
Having friends and community is a new experience for Evariste and his group peers. Being orphaned by AIDS still carries a strong stigma in many African countries. In Rwanda, people tend not to say outright that someone has died of AIDS.
In Rwanda's Nyamabuye District, 20-year-old Mediatrice cares for three younger sisters, a 13-year-old brother Tuyisenge, and a foster child, Cecile. Cecile is HIV-positive. After both of Mediatrice's parents died of HIV/AIDS in 2001, Mediatrice became head of the family. All of the children were malnourished. Mediatrice attended Giving Hope trainings and learned about children's rights, life skills, household management, nutrition and food security, micro-business planning and management, health and hygiene, HIV/AIDS, and how to make animal feeds. Her family is now self-sufficient, two of her sisters are back in primary school, and three of her sisters have taken vocational training classes in sewing, hairdressing and postcard making. They sell cassava cakes and beignets, cassava flour, palm oil and kerosene at the market and from their home.
They're also raising pigs, goats, ducks and vegetables for their own use and to sell at market. The children are now healthy, and they've started saving for the future. Meditrice says, "Before Giving Hope, some of us were street children, or child laborers who worked for food. We were isolated, sad, brokenhearted, physically and sexually abused.
"Now," she said, "we have organized into groups and we help each family have a dream and to become integrated into the community. We are teaching our neighbors to accept child rights and to prevent HIV."
All of the Giving Hope kids are trained to have a dream and work for their dream.
In a new Giving Hope program in Machakos in Kenya's Central Province, George is a youth group member. Outside George's home a good-sized kitchen garden is thriving in its second planting. George has a dream to see his village have well water and electricity and hopes to go to university and become an engineer who will bring electricity to the village.
Another youth working group member Francesca dreams of having a fishpond.
AIDS has orphaned over 613,000 children in Rwanda and 1,731,000 in Uganda. Even in a country like Uganda where HIV prevalence is declining, the numbers of orphans will remain high.
In Uganda, Church World Service's Giving Hope program is working with the Church of Uganda's Planning Development and Rehabilitation division in three of the church's diocese, West Buganda, Bunyoro-Kitara and Kigezi Diocese.
In the Uganda program's first year, Giving Hope teams will work directly with 367 orphaned households-an estimated 1,059 children- and plans to enlist about 15,000 people in surrounding communities, including family members of the targeted orphans, in supporting the children's progress.
In Tanzania, Church World Service is working with the country's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania/North Western Diocese, in the Kagera region where AIDS was first diagnosed. There are more than 34, 260 registered orphans in the church's existing Huduma ya Watoto (service for children) or HUYAWA program.
In the Tanzanian program, now in its second year, Church World Service and HUYAWA are working with 240 youth working groups representing 1,620 orphaned households which include 5,724 children.
In Gitarama, Rwanda, after 18 teenagers graduated from their youth working group's vocational training class in tailoring, nine of them set up a shop in town and nine rented space in the market. They share a common bank account and make daily deposits. After paying the rents, they share the profits-which go toward siblings' school needs, crops and foods. The shop also rents wedding gowns, and the young women recently acquired contracts with two schools to make uniforms.
The Giving Hope program's principles were developed through Church World Service's participation in United Nations, USAID and faith-based working groups. Giving Hope programs are supported through a three-year commitment from the St. Marys United Methodist Church Foundation, St. Marys, Georgia, and are part of CWS's multi-year Africa Initiative.
Church World Service is a relief, development, refugee assistance and human rights agency working in 80 countries.
Sources: United Nations, http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/story.asp?stor yID=400
### Media Contacts Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net