Building community - HIV

According to UNICEF there were 3.4 million orphans in SA in 2009; almost 2 million of these have lost one or both parents to AIDS. http://www.childinfo.org/hiv_aids_orphanestimates.php
It is easy to be overwhelmed by figures like these. And yet some people are inspired by them to respond. Like Vivienne Mciteka, founder of Umtha Welanga.  

Experts working on HIV and Aids agree that stigma is one of the main drivers of the pandemic. What does that mean?
Here are some facts:
• Many people who suspect that they might be HIV positive do not get tested for HIV (only 15% of those infected know that they are HIV positive – and those who don’t know cannot get help, and they can pass it on unknowingly – to partners, to babies);

Sisonke Beading and Sewing Project is an income-generating group of a HIV-positive mothers in Cape Town supported by FAMSA (Family South Africa) through Flora Dlodlo. RUC offer additional support to the group through donations. Although the mothers face continual health problems, which affects their work, they remain positive and enthusiastic about the project.

Through the 2009 December retiring offering, members and friends of Rondebosch United Church contributed R11,200 to the goGogetters of Maluti in the Eastern Cape. The Maluti district is one of the poorest and most remote areas in South Africa, pushed up against the southern Drakensberg. There, in 2006, a group of grandmothers established a home for orphaned children, called Noncedo (‘We help’). By 2008, they had 22 children.

For the past six years the German charity Lichtblick has sponsored Christmas parcels for families living with or affected by HIV/Aids. In 2009 Lichtblick, together with Kinderhilfe, sponsored 30 food parcels and 30 rucksacks for 30 children and their families.

Do you remember the bumper sticker craze of the late 1980s that had those of us who are a little prudish walking around like we had sour lemons in our mouths? Let me remind you: ‘Surfers do it on the waves’; ‘pilots do it the air’; ‘joggers do it on the run’, etc. Well, not to be outdone, a clergyman from Cape Town – whose name escapes me now – posted his version on the billboard outside the church.

The retiring offering for December 2008 raised close to R10,000 in support of loveLife’s goGogetters – grandmothers who each look after up to ten children and teenagers who are directly affected by HIV/Aids. The funds were sent to goGogetters in Mbekweni township near Paarl, who decided that the money would best be used buying new school uniforms for 23 children in their care.

The retiring offering collected during December 2008, together with the special Christmas morning offering, was used to support gogos in LoveLife’s new goGogetters programme. goGogetters are a network of 500 grandmothers across South Africa who protect teenagers and children at risk from HIV. They make them feel they belong, keep them at school, help them to access social grants, prevent sexual and physical abuse and help feed them.