The Global Fund For Children

World AIDS Day: What does it mean to me?

• By Emmanuel Otoo on November 20th, 2011
• Category: Blog, Sub-Saharan Africa

Washington, DC – At GFC, we take pride in collaborating with a number of grantee partners that work with children who are living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. Our objective is to strengthen the efforts and creativity of grantee partners such as Synergie pour l’Enfance in Senegal, an organization that works with community members to create awareness on HIV/AIDS and also focuses on treatment. Synergie pour l’Enfance provides medical, counseling, and nutritional services to children living on the streets and in rural areas who have been affected or infected by HIV/AIDS and conducts awareness-raising and advocacy initiatives for the greater community to eliminate the stigma against HIV-positive children.

In Kenya, GFC is supporting Total War Against AIDS Youth Foundation, a youth-led community development organization in Mombasa that works to empower orphaned children and youth through three main programs that center around art and education: a home for orphaned and abandoned children, an early childhood education center, and an income-generating music group. Physicians for Social Justice, a GFC grantee partner in Nigeria, takes HIV testing and essential health services to rural communities in Niger State and promotes community health through mobile health units that provide basic health services and health education to children.

In the Khayelitsha township of Capetown, South Africa, Grandmothers Against Poverty and AIDS (GAPA) has created a social support network for grandmothers and children who come from HIV/AIDS-affected households. As part of its support to grandmothers caring for their orphaned grandchildren, GAPA runs an early childhood center for young children and an after-school program for children in primary school to keep them in a safe and supportive environment. These and so many other efforts by GFC’s partners ensure that children affected or infected by HIV/AIDS are in school, have nutritious meals, have sustainable access to basic healthcare, receive culturally sensitive psychosocial support, and grow up in an environment filled with love, care, dignity, and respect. According to a 2010 UNAIDS report, there were an estimated 33.3 million people living with HIV/AIDS in 2009. Of these, 2.5 million were children. In the same year, there were 1.3 million AIDS-related deaths among children and adults in sub-Saharan Africa and 24,000 in North Africa and the Middle East. The report further indicated that sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by HIV/AIDS than any other region in the world, with an estimated 22.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, about two-thirds of the global total.

The economic and socio-cultural consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are widely felt in many areas and sectors, and the role of our grantees in mobilizing grassroots efforts in a sustainable way to address this issue is critical. We want to take advantage of World AIDS Day to applaud our grantee partners for their great work and to remind our readers about the children around the world who are living with HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS deprives children of the opportunity to be children and enjoy being children, and it increases their risks of being trafficked and being sexually and physically exploited or abused.

I urge you to support the fight against AIDS and to join us in helping children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS to enjoy their childhood. The time to act is now. One of the ways in which you can meaningfully observe World AIDS Day is to donate to The Global Fund for Children today to support our grantee partners working with HIV/AIDS-affected children.