AIDS Orphans (3)
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Dear Osei and All,
Hello and thanks very much for the postings on this difficult sub-
ject. I am the director of the international wing of a Kenyan AIDS
organization (KAIPPG, or Kenya AIDS Intervention/Prevention Project
Group), and besides a full range of AIDS services -- including pri-
mary focus on children, and AIDS orphans in particular -- we also ad-
dress poverty, which does seem at the root of many of the other prob-
lems which these children and the Continent are facing.
Our organization and many others like us have microcredit programs to
address poverty and educational programs for both children and
adults, including vocational and job-skills trainings in addition to
general education and the more specific HIV/AIDS education. Our in-
ternational branch includes volunteers from 20 countries helping us
to raise funds and friends, and there are many volunteers within
Kenya itself helping us to do the same. Our own Executive Director
and his wife have adopted two children orphaned by AIDS (in addition
to caring for their own 3 children), and hope that others will do the
same, and we are thinking of setting up a fund from which people who
would like to follow suit can draw on so they will have some kind of
financial support to help strengthen their commitment. We are very
aware that social cohesion is a problem, and that extended-family
members are having a hard time coping, and our programs are designed
to address just these concerns and problems (and this is true for
many programs I know of in Kenya and throughout Africa).
Whole communities are being enlisted to help children and youth (as
well as adults), and our guiding philosophy is helping individuals
and communities to help themselves, so we encourage them to create,
develop, and implement plans of action which they then carry out,
with various types of support from us as we can offer it. The ulti-
mate goal is empowerment, and so far we have helped about 25,000 in-
dividuals, with a much larger reach for our educational programs. We
are now hoping to partner with organizations doing the same in vari-
ous parts of Kenya and elsewhere, and we are working on ICT initia-
tives (for general and AIDS education, and also job-training and mi-
croenterprise development), in addition to working with organizations
like Netaid (through which we have gotten most of our volunteers) and
Africamix, which seeks to utilize music and the arts to address is-
sues affecting children and youth, like abuse, AIDS, development, and
wellness.
Please see:
http://www.netaid.org
and
http://www.africamix.com
for more details of their work. One of our Kenyan volunteers has even
written a multimedia performance piece called "Poetry on the Note of
Life" -- with a focus on AIDS education and prevention for youth --
which is now in rehearsals in Kenya, and will hopefully be presented
as part of the World AIDS Day activities for young people in Nakuru,
Kenya.
This is just a very short introduction to all of the "good news"
about what is happening with regard to addressing AIDS and the prob-
lems of poverty and orphanhood due to AIDS. This one story is multi-
plied a thousand-fold across Africa, and is truly inspiring. What
people can do is get involved -- speak up and out, volunteer, donate
money/time/supplies, adopt or at least be a foster parent for a child
-- and this will help to address a daunting challenge, which other-
wise often seems to offer little hope or remedy.
I will be happy to discuss our own and other efforts further with
people, and will say many thanks for your time, energy, attention,
and support, in whatever way it can be given.
With all best wishes, and yours in struggle and hope!
Janet Feldman, Director
KAIPPG/International
mailto:kaippg@earthlink.net
http://www.kaippg.org
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