95% of the world's AIDS orphans live in sub-Saharan Africa. The AIDS pandemic has created an orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. Turning the tide of this emergency requires immediate and sustained action at all levels. This unprecedented orphan crisis will require radically scaled-up national, regional, and community responses for at least two decades -- especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where children have been hardest hit.
Orphans due to other causes also demand attention. Increases in the number of orphans due to AIDS should be considered as part of a much larger problem of orphaning due to all causes. In 12 African countries, projections show that orphans will comprise at least 15% of all children under 15 years of age by 2010.
Other children are also vulnerable. The safety, health, and survival of all children in affected countries are increasingly jeopardized due to the effects of AIDS on families and communities. Increasing numbers of children are living with sick or dying parents or in households that have taken in orphans. Moreover, the pandemic is deepening poverty in entire communities, with children usually the first to suffer from the deprivation.
Communities with a high proportion of orphans require urgent assistance. Responses need to be focused and scaled up in communities with high proportions of orphans and other children affected by HIV/AIDS. Because they are at the center of the crisis, these communities are the most overstretched. Collaboration is key. No one can tackle this crisis alone -- we need your help.
As parents and other family members become ill, children take on greater responsibility for income generation, food production, and care of family members. They face decreased access to adequate nutrition, basic health care, housing, and clothing. Very few of these families can afford to send their children to school, with young girls at particular risk of being denied an education. In both urban and rural areas, many orphans are struggling to survive on their own in child-headed households. Many others are forced to live on the street.
Why Orphans and widows education? This cycle of abject poverty is like perpetual quicksand. With parents dead and/or dying, children must do all they can to survive, including work in the fields or beg in the streets. But without the benefits of an education, they are destined for poverty. The cycle continues when they have children and cannot afford to send them to school (education is not free for most Ugandans). The villages and counties of these children suffer also -- the massive drain of public resources and the lack of tax revenue deepen the problem.
By offering free education, vocational training, spiritual empowerment, entrepreneurial guidance and support, we can give these children something more important than a hand-out: we can give them HOPE. |
