This project in partnership with the United Baptist Church (UBC) keeps orphans and vulnerable children in school, maximising their potential of becoming fully contributing citizens in society. Ensuring educational opportunities for children is critical to mitigating HIV-related vulnerability.
Faced with HIV and AIDS in the family, many children drop out of school. Some are exposed to trauma and abuse. Trained volunteer church members visit such children in their communities at least twice a month.
Bonface and Tatenda are ten-year-old children cared for by this programme. Orphaned at five years old, a church member took them in, but she is a widow and is also finding it difficult to feed her family.
The project helps by providing them with peanut butter and cooking oil, but that is not enough for them. They need more food. One of the goals of the project is to empower them, and the hundreds of other children being cared for, to grow food for themselves. We have hundreds of other children in our orphans and vulnerable children ministry that are living in similar conditions. They and their care-givers need to be empowered to grow food for themselves.
Feeding orphaned babies can be a challenge for grandparents and other relatives. Goats' milk has been found to be a more nutritious alternative to formula. The project seeks to provide goats for those caring for orphaned babies, to give these young children a better start in life.
This project will also enable 3,000 orphans to go to school by paying their school fees, purchasing school uniforms for 150 of them and providing writing materials for 2,000 of them within the year.
There are now 300 volunteers involved in the project. Many are from the local churches and receive training and support to help them in their ministry to orphans and vulnerable children.
