Bringing hope, changing children's lives:
Making a difference in the lives of orphans and vulnerable children,
one child at a time, community by community.

The Need

The disease of HIV/AIDS has devastated millions of African families leaving many children orphaned and in crisis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) an estimated 14 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa have lost their mother or both parents to HIV/AIDS. In Kenya alone, there are over one million HIV/AIDS orphans and the number continues to rise.

The effects of HIV/AIDS coupled with poverty have particularly devastated children in rural communities. Rural areas are less likely to benefit from governmental as well as from non-governmental HIV/AIDS programs due to lack of accessibility. Rural families have therefore had to rely more heavily on extended family and kinship support. Unfortunately, HIV/AIDS is generating orphans so rapidly that those traditional safety-net structures are no longer able to cope. As a result, many orphaned children find themselves in desperate situations, usually with no one to care for them and with no hope for the future.

Children in rural communities whose parents fall sick or die from HIV/AIDS have few choices. Some are able to remain in their homesteads and form child-headed households, where the older children assume responsibility for their younger siblings. Others find their way to cities and towns where they survive by begging, stealing or prostituting themselves for survival, thereby running the risk of becoming sick themselves. Yet others end up in orphanages, usually far away from their home villages, where no one understands their language. Many orphanages face overcrowding and are ill equipped to meet the Children’s individual needs.