Saving Children from AIDS
MAP International
Website: http://www.map.org
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1. A teacher runs students through a typical lesson at the Anchor of Hope Academy near Nairobi, Kenya. Students, who come from homes affected by AIDS and poverty, receive free instruction, textbooks and lunch.
The children lined up single-file outside the small school house in a slum just outside of Nairobi, Kenya. They talked while waiting for their lunch - soup, rice and bread - and then filed back inside, where they noisily took their places at their desks. They continued to talk as they ate, many of them laughing, and in half an hour they were back at their lessons again, repeating simple sentences a teacher wrote on a chalkboard.
Just outside, David Kariuki, who had launched the program called Anchor of Hope Academy, smiled.
"We wanted to help the community develop a project that will address the issue of education for their children - especially the children who can't afford schools because of the poverty of their parents," he said.
Many of the children can trace their poverty back to AIDS. Their parents are either dying or have died from it, and the students, all between the ages of 5 and 6, often only have older siblings to take care of them.
"The impact of AIDS in this community is pathetic," David said. "This community has lost many people to HIV and AIDS. It has made a tremendous blow."
David, a student at St. Paul's Theological College, has long had an interest in alleviating the HIV/AIDS problem. When he decided to attend seminary, he sought a school with a curriculum that would enable him to do so. He found St. Paul's, one of a group of schools in Kenya and other African countries that has introduced an AIDS curriculum developed by Medical Assistance Programs (MAP) International, a U.S.-based relief and development agency that seeks to eradicate disease and develop holistic health programs throughout the developing world.
"For a long time, I had felt a call within me to work with the people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS," he said. "This program is exactly what I needed."
The St. Paul's program trains students to address HIV and AIDS issues at the community level. All students are required to establish a project to help alleviate the crisis; David chose to found the Anchor of Hope Academy.
The two-room school house, made of sheet metal siding and crude flooring, is the cleanest and most welcoming building within the slum's swath of trash and debris. "Anchor of Hope Academy" has been painted in red lettering above the school's entrance; on one side of the building's façade, the numerals 1 through 10 have been painted; on the other side, the entire alphabet, in both lower and uppercase lettering, has been added.
When the school first opened, in January of 2006, only one student attended the first week. Another student began attending soon thereafter; since then, the student body has grown to 22. Each child receives scholastic instruction, textbooks and lunch, all at no cost to their families.
"This community has lost many people to HIV and AIDS," David said. "We don't want to lose any of the children. And by providing them with the necessary education and the hope, love and support that we offer here, I don't think we will."
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
