President Museveni said, “I would encourage you to abstain rather than thinking that you would survive on ARVs. These drugs make you live longer but you are no longer a complete person. This is something I have witnessed within the army.”

“Out of 100 children born to infected mothers, there is a 10 percent risk of transmitting the virus to babies born to mothers who are on ARVs. This means that there is still a risk even when ARVs are available,” said Museveni.

I was happy to read that the Ugandan President showed concern for his people and that he offered 50,000 US dollars to a Ugandan community in Rwanda, which was used to set up an auto-mechanic training garage and a residential house for rent. And in other news concerning HIV/AIDS in Uganda, Health Minister Christine Ondoa made a remark that HIV/AIDS can be cured through prayer. The Observer newspaper quoted her to have had a first hand experience with people she claimed was infected by the HIV/AIDS virus but after a series of prayer tested negative.

Head of The AIDS Support Organization (TASO), Richard Ochai said such statements continuously curtail TASO efforts to fight against HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, he relies on science and the fact that ARVs must be taken because without the virus will appear again.

There are a few grey areas here that I would rather not get into but I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter:

Does abstaining from pre-marital sex really protect against contracting the HIV/AIDS virus in Uganda? (Consider this fact from Avert.org: Women are disproportionately affected, accounting for 57 percent of all adults living with HIV.)

Do you think prayer alone can cure HIV/AIDS? If so, how?

You can read more about the article here or by clicking the links below:
- Ugandan President offers HIV Tips
- Minister’s Comment on HIV/AIDS Careless, say Experts

However awful the course of the virus can be on a person or family with few resources, small communities and rural villages in Uganda in association with the Asili Hospital and Just Like My Child have chosen life. They choose to work through the pain and create a safety net for their children and in most cases their children’s children. Project Grace is a microenterprise project at its best. By Guiding Resources And Creating Empowerment (GRACE) in the most needy communities, Project GRACE provides a small loan (poultry or livestock) together with intensive training to healthy, self-motivated individuals with AIDS to create a self-sustaining business that will support their families and send their children to school.

I ask, “What’s AIDS got to do with it?” because the chances of meeting a person with AIDS in Uganda is far greater than meeting someone here in the States. I also ask that because here in the U.S., those infected are not far from support groups, health care, or a free public education system, which their children can attend. In developing countries, such as Uganda, access to AIDS treatment is extremely limited, the stigma of the disease causes those affected to withdraw and sink further into poverty, and the financial fall out is devastating for a family.  Just Like My Child believes in giving a hand up, never a hand out by assisting with access to AIDS treatment, providing support through health care workers that visit patients at their homes, and proven results through microenterprise initiatives.

Project GRACE participants are responsible for gathering material and building shelter for their animals, which are raised for food, trade and sale. They learn how to use their garden and livestock in sustainable and environmentally healthy ways: Gardens help feed the animals and animals provide natural fertilizer for the garden. At the end of the program, participants repay their loan by bringing a pair of their animal’s offspring back to Asili Hopsital, enabling Project GRACE to continue a cycle of empowering future participants with tools to achieve self-sustenance. The project provides intensive training to healthy, self-motivated individuals with HIV to create a self-sustaining business that will support their families and send their children to school.

Lastly, did you know all this can happen with a mere $400 contribution? That $400 provides a family of six with a sustainable business… this truly is the gift that keeps on giving. For more information on Project Grace please click here or visit Just Like My Child.

But the most fun and fulfilling part of the trip was spending a lot of time with the six children we are sponsoring in boarding schools as part of our Mandela Project. Just three short years ago, these children were destined to live a voiceless, nameless existence in one of the poorest villages in the areas we serve — they, like so many others, were at risk of death through early pregnancy and marriage. Several of their parents were on the verge of death from AIDS. These six children have grown and have become such an inspiration to their villages and have made me so proud.

Today, our kids are BIG (they’ve grown so much).  They are speaking English, reading fluently and at the top of their classes. Their parents are on AIDS treatment and they are healthy with new income-generating businesses that are alleviating their heavy burden. The students are full of ideas and fun and have a bit of attitude like all good teenagers. Healthy teenagers!

Witnessing their growth and development is like a metaphor for all of our work in Uganda — slowly by slowly the seeds have been planted, the roots are strong, and the fruit of our work is ripening. The communities are thriving, the children are healthy, and the elders are growing stronger. With so much community in the air it makes one realize how small efforts make tremendous differences.

If you would like more information about Just Like My Child and it’s specialized programs, contact Vivian Glyck at info@justlikemychild.org.  To donate please click here

The Just Like My Child Foundation has received crucial donations from the Clinton Foundation in the past, which has provided Uganda with the essential CD-4 Analyzer, a piece of laboratory equipment used in the diagnosis of AIDS. The pleasure of meeting President Clinton along with other celebrities such as Chelsea Clinton, Blake Griffin, Maria Bello, Michael Strahan, and Drake was a great honor for me.

James Malinchak, ABC’s Secret Millionaire has also provided Just Like My Child with a generous donation – a school. Malinchak raised enough funds for Ugandan children in the village of Namumira to attend a clean, bright, and safe school that they previously would never have been able to access. The school has four classrooms, which provides education for 200 students as well as a bright promise for the future.

Through the help of The Clinton Foundation and ABC’s Secret Millionaire James Malinchak the Just Like My Child Foundation is successfully providing holistic solutions to poverty and helping Ugandan families experience the power of potential. I am forever gracious for the donations and contributions from organizations such as the Clinton Foundation and people like James Malinchak.

I started Just Like My Child because I was eager to make a difference in the lives of other mothers and children. The efforts of The Clinton Foundation and James Malinchak enable many people to know the joy of helping to save and enrich lives. Just Like My Child’s commitment is to create a world where all children feel joy and happiness by experiencing his or her full potential.

When we first met Anatolia she said that all she wanted was the freedom to live out the rest of her days in peace, raise her children and her animals in order to secure a bright future for her whole family. She has done just that and now will have enough money to pay for her children’s education. Like so many mothers, Anatolia wants the best for her children and for them to want for nothing. Anatolia is taking action to break the cycle of poverty and showing her children (and grandchildren) what empowerment looks and feels like.

In my previous blog, Project GRACE: Micro-enterprising to Achieve Self Reliance in Uganda, I shared a video and details about how our program is providing families like Anatolia’s with the tools to create, manage and profit from their own business. For thousands of these families the physical effects of HIV/AIDS and/or the stigma associated with it prevents the adults from being able to support their families.

Through Just Like My Child Foundation’s work with Bishop Asili Hospital, mothers and fathers are provided with the necessary treatment, and Project GRACE empowers them to become self-reliant: through micro-enterprise. Through a loan of poultry of livestock along with training, these impoverished families can create a self-sustaining business that gives them hope and pride.

Project GRACE is giving HIV families a second chance and a step up not a hand out. It brings me great joy to share Anatolia’s heartwarming success story that your funds to Project GRACE have made possible.

Thank you to those of you who continue to support our efforts with your donations.

$300 provides an entire family of 6 with a complete sustainable business. Invest TODAY in Just Like My Child and help us empower communities to achieve self-sustenance and break the cycle of poverty.

Is this possible? Could a community, a generation or a gender honestly believe that women who contract HIV or are raped brought it upon themselves? I am at a loss on how best to report on this subject so let’s start with the facts.

21-year old Regina Joseph was beaten by a group of men on the street of Tanzania’s Mkinga District and forced to remove her clothes because it was their way of “punishing her for allegedly dressing in an alluring way with the intention of passing on the HIV virus.” (They had no knowledge of her HIV status).
Community health workers in Mkinga are trying to change the methods the male elders of their community are using to fight HIV. The elders believe the best way to reduce the spread of HIV is to go back to their ancient cultural values and they are encouraging their communities to punish “inappropriately” dressed women. They go on to say that men would not stray from their wives if women dressed more plainly which in turn would reduce the cases of new HIV infections.

Strong moral values are an essential part of a healthy community, however, all data suggests that how a woman dresses has nothing to do with the spread of HIV. Men must be brought into the dialogue to understand and accept their role in perpetuating this deadly disease In the U.S. we would not tolerate this type of punishment nor would we excuse a gender-based hate crime of this nature. Could you imagine your daughter, niece or sister being accosted on the street the way Regina was? It is a travesty that this example has to demonstrate the enormous lack of women’s rights in Africa. The stigmas associated with AIDS are still tremendous, and many women in parts of Africa are treated like outcasts when they are only “believed” to have HIV. When they actually do contract the disease they lose their jobs and their ability to support their families.

Education is the key to reducing HIV infection and cases of discrimination against women. If you are like me and stories like Regina’s leave you feeling as though you must make a difference, you can support Just Like My Child’s successful program to teach men and women in rural communities about human, children’s and women’s rights through our life-empowering program, Project Justice. We need your help. Please make a difference by visiting: https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=26195&Itemid=108

Click here to read the full article about Regina Joseph.

African women in their early 20s represent the largest group of the adult population infected with HIV. One of the causes is that their sexual partners refuse to wear condoms. This refusal is often a death sentence for the female partner. So how can infections be reduced among these women? Some might say that education is the key. The education exists, but often the women lack the power to influence their partner’s choices. African women have not had much control over the prevention of HIV, but now there is hope.

South African scientists released exciting results of a clinical trial that a new vaginal gel containing antiretroviral drugs offers women a strong level of protection and a greater degree of control against HIV infection.

Conducted in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province by Prof Salim Abdool Karim and his wife Quarraisha, the clinical trial results showed that using the gel reduced the risk of HIV infection by 39 per cent overall among women, but for those who used it most consistently the protection rate was 54 per cent. It is forecasted that over the next 20 years, the gel could prevent as many as 1.3 million new infections and 800,000 deaths in South Africa.

The scientists are working to conduct the third and final stage of the trial, which is estimated to take “a number of years” to complete.

The effectiveness of this protective gel is very encouraging news for the HIV epidemic in South African and for the opportunity for women to have more control over preventing the disease.

The reality of the situation is that although the study was done on a large portion of rural African women, the challenge throughout much of Africa, is that often there is a long delay between breakthroughs like this and its distribution throughout the rural communities where it is needed most.

As I’ve often said, the devil is in the details in Africa. We’ve had anti-retro-viral drugs to combat AIDS for years now, yet the education, investment, and distribution of the drugs is an intense process. It requires deep commitment on the part of the communities on the ground and the aid organizations which finance and distribute them. We need to commit ourselves to making these types of breakthroughs accessible not just in the urban areas. Yes, education is important, but often access for all is the key to the exciting results that are possible.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, there is a stigma in Uganda surrounding families with HIV which results in joblessness and poverty. The more women who can prevent contracting HIV, the better their family’s chances to be self reliant.

For those families who have already contracted HIV, Just Like My Child Foundation along with the Bishop Asili Hospital is helping them become self-sufficient through a micro-enterprise program called Project Grace. To learn more about Project Grace, go to my previous post Project Grace: Achieving Self Reliance in Uganda (link) and watch the inspiring video.

For more details about the study, read the full article here.

Our country director, Dena (whom you hear from a lot on here), recently notified us that George, the brother of one of our sponsorship girls Nyangoma, died last week. Dena spent his last days and weeks with him, his mother Florence, and the rest of the family. Here is her touching account of the tragedy:

This has truly been an emotional roller coaster. One day we see progress with Florence and the boys, the next day they are suffering and it’s difficult to know the best way to help on the emotional front. It’s nearly impossible to turn away when you see the need of someone like Florence and her family, they are truly among the poorest.

It’s hard to imagine what it must be like as a single mother, living with AIDS and with two small children with AIDS. Her family gave her away when she was young (never providing her with any education at all) to an old man for a bunch of cattle, and now they won’t support her in any way, not even when her son George died this week. She has no family to turn to for support, no land (no place of her own, not even to bury her son), no garden, no one who believes in her… and yet she is expected to just pick herself up.

People around here (myself included at times) have gotten annoyed with her for being in denial about her situation for so long. No one talks about the fact that this is a normal psychological side effect of the disease and instead people judge her. What do they judge her for? Because she would get frustrated at times for having to take George to the hospital so frequently.

What people don’t understand is that she’s frustrated because every day she was with George at the hospital was a day when she was not working – a day she won’t be able to buy food.

Just before George got sick this last time she was so proud for working so hard: she had been promised enough work to buy a bag of corn flour (that would allow her to make porridge for the family for one month) and save enough money so that she could visit Nyangoma (her daughter and one of our sponsorship girls) by herself on visiting day, for the first time. Now this has been a major goal for her in recent weeks. And she had to give it all up so that she could take care of George. Florence was forced to choose between the work that would feed her children and the hospital visit that would ease George’s suffering. For a single mother like her in Africa… to care for one child can mean the others starve. To keep everyone fed can severely affect the child wasting away from AIDS. No mother should ever be forced into such a choice. Watching Florence endure this broke my heart.

She really struggled, being so sick herself with AIDS, and taking care of two boys who also needed a lot of medical attention, she really did everything she could to help George. George’s father finally did come yesterday to take George to the family’s home place to be buried, which is customary. Florence really wanted this too, because the alternative would have been to bury him in a public site (which is basically a mass shallow grave). Her family is not in the picture or apparently helpful at all, so she is truly all alone. The father seems to care about the boys, but we don’t know where he has been all of this time. At least he was here now.

The nurses tell me that George was coherent just before he passed away. He told his mom he was losing energy to breath and asked her to take him in her arms, to sleep with her on the mat. He thought this would give him strength.

He passed away in her arms.

I sat a long time with Florence while she cried for him yesterday morning and last night. Brian (George’s brother) kept looking for George everywhere in the hospital; he still thinks George is just sleeping. The father could only afford to bring one motorcycle for George to take him to his home village of Basoga for burial, very, very far away on the opposite side of the country. He couldn’t afford to get another motorcycle to bring Florence and Brian with him. Florence said it was okay, but we put some money together to get a second motorcycle so that her and Brian could also attend, which is so important for them both.

When I think about George, I think about the times we spent here, the day we drew pictures together while we waited for his treatment outside the hospital and how happy he was about the houses and letter and numbers he had drawn. About the X-mas we all spent together watching Harry Potter, and eating cake, with the other kids, and how after his mom took him to Mild May to get treatment for TB, he came back looking so healthy and happy, his eyes were dancing, as if to say, “Look at me, I’m okay now.” He was so happy to be able to play with the other kids. I remember seeing him running and playing with kids for the first time. I’ll remember George this way and I’m glad he doesn’t have to suffer anymore.

Thanks so much for all of your thoughts, and thank you for your comments on remaining vigilant in helping women and children — so important, the poorest of the poor are truly in dire, dire need of help. I think for any of us here, we can get so overwhelmed by the need that it is easy to give up on the neediest, but children like George and Brian and Nyangoma and mother’s like Florence are definitely counting on us. Thank you for supporting me here and allowing me to assist in JLMC’s mission.

Love,
Dena Lewerke
Country Director, Uganda
Just Like My Child Foundation

The pilot of this program includes ten households, all headed by HIV/AIDS patients of Bishop Asili Hospital from two small villages in the surrounding area. These families were chosen based upon a  developed criteria, counseling sessions and home visits that ensure they are in desperate need, are extremely dedicated to the success of the project and have a family support system to take on the bulk of the project should the patient fall sick.

Nayiga Sarah, Project GRACE participant is shown in the back row left with her elderly grandfather & the many children she supports

Twenty seven year old, Nayiga Sarah is an AIDS patient at Bishop Asili Hospital. She is currently on Anti-Retral Viral treatment and has real hope for the future of her family. She is currently attempting to support seven people, which includes her elderly grand-father, her own three children and three children of other relatives that are living in her humble home. Sarah did not have the opportunity to get an education beyond seventh grade and through her struggles she has learned the importance of sending her children to school. With the help of Just Like My Child Foundations Project GRACE support, Sarah will start a poultry project that will lift her out of her desperate situation and enable her to pay for her children to go to school as well as feed her family. It is Sarah’s wish to grow and expand her poultry project and use the eggs from her hens along with the garden she has already started to provide herself and the many children of her household with nutritious meals.

Tezigatwa Amina, Project GRACE participant shown left with her children and elderly mother

Project GRACE participants are recieving intensive agricultural training to ensure the success of their projects

Nayiga Sarah and her family have already begun gathering materials for their poultry shelter

Tezigatwa Amina and her family have gathered strong materials that will be used for the walls and roofing of their poultry shelter

Trainer James from NAADS visits Nayiga Sarahs home and gives her training and advice on how to use her own home as a model for her poultry shelter

James, trainer from NAADS gives Tezigatwa Amina advice on where to place her poultry shelter and draws a diagram to help explain the building process to her

SHANTI UGANDA is a Vancouver based organization dedicated to helping children, women and communities in Uganda find peace and health. It is their belief that in order to overcome trauma and conflict within a community, we must first allow individuals to heal and uplift their minds, bodies and spirits. Their programs provide the tools needed to find inner peace and well-being, foster conscious birth and manifest health, happiness and community.  All Shanti Uganda projects combine healing, birth education and community development initiatives. Natalie Angell, founder of Shanti Uganda has been here at Bishop Asili for the last few days training a small group of HIV positive women on how to make paper bead necklaces. The women are to gather for five full days to learn the methods involved in cutting and measuring paper, rolling beads, varnishing beads, hanging them to dry and then finally making them into beautiful pieces of jewelry.

Natalie Angell and her counterpart Julius work together to train the women on the bead making process

Thirty women eagerly gather together in this round hut every day to learn and practice what they've been taught

The paper must first be measured and cut properly in order for it to be rolled into a perfect paper bead shape.

The paper is then rolled tightly around a needle. It takes a great deal of patients and practice in order to ensure that the outcome is a quality paper bead. The process is meticulous and challenging.

Natalie and Julius give the women constructive criticism for improved quality and praise to those beads that are well made.

The beads are placed on strings and covered with a clear varnish. Once they have dried they will be strung into lovely pieces of jewelry, which will be purchased from the women by Shanti Uganda

I stopped by the hut to greet the women and to see how things were coming along for Natalie and Julius. The women were all enthusiastically making beads and are all clearly enjoying their newly learned skill!! Each of them is walking a treacherous path in life that most of us cannot relate to. It’s such a joy to see a hint of hope in these women’ s eyes.

http://shantiuganda.blogspot.com