"Do you really hold them?!" (via the ONE blog)
on Z for Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe), 24/Feb/2011 07:05, 34 days ago
I traveled to the rural areas for work last week and I wrote about my experience for the ONE blog! The article waspublishedyesterday (yay!) and I've also included the entire thing below:Tzviatko Chiderov is a ONE volunteer from Chicago and has been a member since 2007. He is currently on assignment in Zimbabwe with Voluntary Services Overseas. Keep on the lookout for more posts like these in the series“Z for Zimbabwe.”Last week was an emotional and powerful bouquet of experiences. I went on a field visit to Mashonaland East, a province just east of Harare all the way to the Mozambican border, with some of my colleagues from the communications department at the National AIDS Council of Zimbabwe. The goal of our field work was to observe how different programs, mainly focused on children, are operating in this province. We visited a school and a youth center in the town of Mudzi and a home for orphaned and abandoned children in Mutoko.In Mudzi we saw more than 70 school children crammed into a classroom. The lesson we attended was on HIV/AIDS. The children, many with no shoes and clearly affected by poverty, were surprisingly cheerful. They were just as curious and friendly as any other kids and their singing and laughing was contagious. The youth center we visited in the same town had been funded by the Global Fund and is now well on its way to being successfully sustained by the community it serves. Children spend up to two hours there every day over lunch watching educational movies on HIV/AIDS, reading and playing cards and ping-pong.In Mutoko, we spent most of our time atMother of Peace Community — a home for orphaned and abandoned children. It was the first institution to offer its services to HIV-positive children when it opened its doors in 1995. In the 90s, when there was a deadly amount of stigma around AIDS, people in the surrounding community resented the home. Oftentimes, they would ask the women working there, “Do you really hold them?” referring to the HIV-positive children. The response: “Oh, yes we do! We hug them and give them love just the same as any other. They’re all children.” The administrators told us that earlier, many of the children died because people in the community didn’t help them and doctors refused to treat them.Now, more than 15 years later, education, awareness and increased assistance have changed everything. All HIV-positive children in the home are on antiretroviral treatment, and there were no deaths in 2010.Mother of Peace Community is one of the largest institutions of its kind in Zimbabwe. It currently houses 125 children— some abandoned, most orphaned. What amazed me is the efficiency and high focus on sustainability put on everything that’s done in the home. There’s a school, clinic and even a farm on site. With time, and when operating at capacity, these extra activities should be able to fully sustain thehome.Mother of Peace also puts high focus on their intensive reintegration program. Many children are abandoned because their families can’t afford to take care of them. Those who have known relatives become part of the reintegration program. Whenever possible and if proper care for the child is available, arrangements are made to have the children leave the home and be reunited with members of their family. Joseph, an 8-year-old who is part of the reintegration program, was two weeks old when he arrived in the home. His aunt kept in touch with people in the home and visited him often. She wanted to take him to live with her, but her family was too poor to afford to take care of one more. Mother of Peace helped Joseph reintegrate back into the community and be with his aunt by building an extra room and a proper toilet on the family’s land.Mother of Peace has managed to continue doing outstanding work even through the major political and economic struggles in Zimbabwe during the past decade. In 2008, at the hardest time of the crisis, some people from the nearby town turned to the home for food and shelter. What the home survives on is private donations and help from development organizations— WHO, Heifer, Rotary International, USAID — all of which are focused on effective, successful projects.What I saw in the field last week were many programs that are working. Funding appears to be put to good use and it is saving lives. This is why it hurts me to come back to news of cuts to the international development budget in the US. Without support many of these programs will vanish. Why do we want to stop something that is finally on the right track?! I called my senator’s Washington DC office today to voice my concern and I sincerely hope our legislators will reconsider.Read more about Tzviatko’s travel adventures on his blog, Z for Zimbabwe.