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Newspapers and scientists sometimes brings us terrifying predictions of worldwide epidemics like SARS, and various kinds of flu from different animals like birds and swine. How about the one that’s already raging across every continent – AIDS? It’s deadly enough to have been included in the Millennium Development Goals … but death isn’t the only result of this disease. The people suffering with AIDS, especially children, are often ostracised and discriminated against because of cultural myths and factual misconceptions. Even schoolchildren whose parents have AIDS suffer this social stigma.
Good thing Viva has teamed up with more than ten international charities to begin to change that! We’re working with World Vision, Compassion, Tearfund and others to deliver training called ‘Let Your Light Shine’ to hundreds of adults who care for children. Let Your Light Shine uses a DVD that teaches caregivers how to provide the best support and care for children suffering under the personal or societal effects of HIV and AIDS. Let Your Light Shine has been specially designed to be useful to churches, orphanages, schools, communities and individual caregivers. Let your Light Shine includes short documentaries of children who have been living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. It also features 12 educational sections that dispel myths about HIV/AIDS, provide basic facts about the disease, and teach workers how to prevent the spread of the virus. It’s shown by a trained caregiver who helps the viewers understand the needs of sick or orphaned children, and how to prevent AIDS from spreading to healthy children. This doesn’t just improve care for the kids, it also changes local communities by getting correct information out there!
And the amazing thing about using our city-wide networks around Africa is that we’re able to deliver Let Your Light Shine to lots of caregivers at once. In fact, at our first session in Kampala we trained 58 representatives from our network member projects. They went out and told 200 more workers what they’d learned. Those 200 went out and told their own colleagues – 776 of them! So now, through just one day of training from Viva, 1034 caregivers in Kampala know how to care for children suffering from AIDS. We’re pretty confident they’re not keeping the information to themselves, but telling their families and friends how to avoid contracting the disease.
We’ve now trained more than 100 people through our networks in Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Even if none of those people were to teach someone else (which, of course, we know they have!) that would still translate to approximately 5,000 children receiving better care. Those children will grow up without the damaging cultural prejudices against AIDS sufferers that their peers might have, and they’ll have a better understanding of the disease and how to avoid it.
Working together is key to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of Combating HIV/AIDS. Even if a big organisation like UNICEF could help thousands of people by working alone, it could potentially help millions by making use of city-wide networks of local projects. That’s why we work so hard to pull people together, forming networks of churches and projects and individuals that can be used to get important information out there that can help kids and communities – helping people to let their light shine!
~ K. in Oxford
Would you like to read more about how Viva's response to HIV/AIDS? Visit http://www.viva.org/HIVandAIDS.aspx
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