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World AIDS Day: CWS pays tribute to aids orphaned youths
01 Dec 2008 21:10:00 GMT
 Source: Church World Service-USA
Website: Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org

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Jane Kanyiva (standing), a Giving Hope participant in Mathare Valley, Kenya, received training and capital to start her own hair salon.
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Jane Kanyiva (standing), a Giving Hope participant in Mathare Valley, Kenya, received training and capital to start her own hair salon.
Photo: CWS

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Monday, December 1, 2008

Making it on their own and together, Giving Hope youth groups now reaching out to the wider community

NAIROBI, KENYA -- On the twentieth anniversary of World AIDS Day, global humanitarian agency Church World Service pays tribute to the millions of young people in African countries who are heads of households orphaned by AIDS or serving as caregivers for aging grandparents or parents suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Church World Service is particularly saluting the nearly 31,000 youths in East Africa who, as AIDS orphans or caretakers, are now collaboratively building new lives, new health, new homes and small businesses, and going to school as members of the Giving Hope program.

More than 11.4 million children have been orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. *

Started in 2004 as part of Church World Service's broad Africa Initiative, the Giving Hope program's innovative approach to self-sufficiency for orphans and vulnerable children is succeeding across Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Mozambique.

Helped by local community organizations and volunteers who serve as mentors, the young household heads and their families are lifting themselves up from bare survival and helping one another by forming collaborative working groups.

As of September, 9,347 "youth caregiver" households representing 30,687 children are making it on their own through their participation in 889 Giving Hope youth caregiver working groups, guided by local CWS partner organizations.

Giving Hope kids shoulder the responsibilities of adults, assuming the role of parents who are no longer there or too ill to assist.

The program's member youth caregivers pull together, helping one another repair and build homes, sharing trade skills, gardening and selling surplus foods locally, keeping younger siblings in school, and, from the small profits of their own growing businesses, they contribute to revolving funds that provide loans for fellow members of their youth working groups.

A key part of the Giving Hope focus: The youth members themselves lead special HIV prevention and education initiatives targeting their peers. To date, they have reached more than 150,500 other youths.

In the realm of self-sufficiency and getting ahead, it's not easy. Some stumble. Some fall away. Most are thriving.

Some Giving Hope youths have been with the program since 2004. Jane Kanyiva, a 19-year-old resident in Mathare, Kenya, joined Giving Hope after she became head of her household at age 15 following the death of both her parents to AIDS in 2004. With two siblings and two children of her own to care for, "I used to be jobless and hopeless," says Kanyiva.

"Then I joined the Giving Hope Pioneer Youth Working Group. I was so happy to be a part of a team, no longer alone. I had a dream to run my own hair salon. In 2008, with a loan from my group, I stated the Queen's Hair Salon in Mathare. My business is doing very well," she says.

"I am now caring for my family, both my brother and sister are re-enrolled in school, and I have a new plan to share with my working group so they can invest in me again, and I can expand my business."

Giving Hope youths learn how to establish a dream, then how to build and manage businesses and care for finances. Like good entrepreneurs, they spot unmet needs in the marketplace and fill them.

In Bondo District, Kenya, the Upendo Youth Working Group in Naya, with 25 child-headed households, began working together in 2007. They helped one another work each caregiver's family farm and started a group tomato farm.

"We decided on a tomato project," says one participant, "because we realized that there wasn't anyone in our community who was growing tomatoes. Women were traveling and bringing back tomatoes from other areas. We began by making a list of what we needed to start—land, seeds, tools, water and knowledge about tomato farming."

The group invited a technician to train them in horticulture and tomato growing, and then leased a quarter of an acre of land that was sitting idle alongside Lake Victoria. The young collaborative saved money and bought seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.

With a weekly work schedule, group members took turns caring for their crops. Five months later they had their first harvest, a bounty they sold at market for profit. Now they're looking at doubling their land and their profits.

In successful Giving Hope enterprises, kids hire kids, helping empower their own working group and wider networks.

Twenty-year-old Christopher Kioko of Ndithini, Kenya, became caregiver of his two younger sisters when he was only fourteen. He didn't handle the job well, smoking bhang (marijuana) and "taking too much karabu," the local brew. But Christopher dreamed of opening a carpentry shop. He joined a Giving Hope working group. With their trust and support, in 2007 he took a loan from the working group's fund.

Today he runs a carpentry workshop and employs two other youths from child-headed households.

"I'm making a net profit of 4,000 to 6,000 Kenyan Shillings (approximately USD $53-$80) per month. My sense of pride in caring for my sisters has really changed," he said.

Consciousness among Giving Hope's youth members has also progressed from securing the most basic needs of food and shelter to recognizing the value of their own identities. They're acquiring identity cards, birth certificates and other legal documents whose value they simply hadn't realized or were denied the chance to acquire due to their relative's death.

Giving Hope youth presents at Mexico AIDS conference

As CWS looks to expand the program and share the youth self-sufficiency principles and steps with leaders and organizations in other African countries, Giving Hope kids are taking a lead in that as well.

In August, 20-year-old Alloyce Obonyo, a Giving Hope working group member from Kendu Bay, western Kenya, presented the program's concepts at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico, along with the program officer from his group's local mentor organization, GROOTS Kenya (Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood).

''Being here at the AIDS 2008 conference for me is a great feat for the youth in Africa who have become parents or caregivers to their siblings as a result of HIV," Obonyo told conference attendees.

"I have come to share and celebrate the successes of all Giving Hope youth caregivers who continue to stand firm and take charge of their lives in face of the many challenges they encounter in life. I have come to be a witness to all so that they can know that indeed youth can shine and rise high when given a chance to seize the opportunities around them.''

In Kenya, GROOTS is one of several key Giving Hope partners, along with MAP International Kenya, the YWCA Kenya, and OAIC-Kenya (Organization of African Instituted Churches).

Giving Hope has been funded by U.S. donors as well as grants from organizations including PEPFAR (The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the St. Marys United Methodist Church Foundation, St. Marys, Georgia.

Building local capacity and sustainability, in the past year nearly a third of the regional implementing partners who assist Giving Hope youth groups have raised funds locally to further support the program.

CWS producing guide for program expansion In 2008, the program's reach moved a notch or two higher. CWS is producing a guidebook of the Giving Hope methods. A pilot production of Youth Caregivers Video Diaries--stories told, filmed and directed by the youth and children in Giving Hope--aired on Kenya's national K-24 station, says CWS Giving Hope program coordinator Caroline Thuo.

In October, Thuo presented the program to NGOs and officials in Cote d'Ivoire.

Youth leading post-election peace and reconciliation

Kenya's post-election violence deeply affected Giving Hope's vulnerable youth families and working groups. Undaunted, CWS partners supported dialogue and reconciliation community meetings--which were requested and moderated by the youth members themselves.

The Giving Hope youth-led activities, which also included more immediate needs like food distribution and medical assistance, helped affected working group members restock their disrupted businesses, assisted in resettling many displaced by the violence, and served as an inspiration to the community overall. Inspired by the youth-led peace and reconciliation efforts, new Giving Hope working groups have started in the region.

###




[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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Phanice Nyandoya (L), 2, and Antony Ochien (R), 4, both living with HIV/AIDS listen to their class teacher at the Dagoretti Children's Centre in Nairobi November 28, 2008. An estimated 33 ...


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