Surviving Child Trust Offers Hope to Africa's AIDS OrphansDate: December 20, 2002 
Ten-year-old Linda Sinoya sat atop a growing mound of dirt that would soon cover her mother's grave. With tears sliding down her face, she looked into the widening hole, where men from her village took turns breaking through rock and hard earth. Her mother's body laid inside the family home, surrounded by women of the village who kept vigil over it.
The people in the village outside Dandara Township are poor, and they had to choose between buying a coffin for Linda's mother and purchasing food. The village chose food. The body was wrapped in a blanket, placed inside a trench and then covered with heavy rocks before the mound of dirt Linda had been sitting on was returned to the hole.
Now, Linda is among the millions of children throughout Africa left orphaned by AIDS. Her grandmother and the elderly women of the village have become her guardians. As the pandemic wipes out a generation of parents, grandparents are increasingly finding themselves raising children again.
In another village, Snodia Rusere was on her deathbed when she called for the area's pastor to baptize her. She had been sick for a long time, her body wasting away from what was believed to be AIDS. She died the morning after her baptism.
Each day in Africa, 9,500 people contract HIV/AIDS and another 6,500 die. A projected 2.5 million will die next year because the continent lacks the medicine to fight the virus. By 2010, Africa will have an estimated 25 million AIDS orphans – defined as children who have lost one or both of their parents to the pandemic.
In Zimbabwe alone, more than 2.2 million people are infected and over 700,000 children are AIDS orphans. One in every four Zimbabweans over age 15 is HIV-positive. The cemeteries are running out of space to bury the estimated 300 Zimbabweans who die from AIDS each day.
Such grim statistics led Josiah Kandemiri, a 1999 graduate of United Methodist-related Africa University, to found Surviving Child Orphan Trust, a program that cares for AIDS orphans and helps them build a future. Kandemiri had been teaching at Murewa Primary School, which is inside the Murewa United Methodist Mission Center, about 56 miles outside Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. In January 2000, he attended an HIV/AIDS awareness workshop organized by the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe and the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. That experience compelled him to take the initiative in caring for AIDS orphans.
As a first step, Kandemiri consulted with the leadership at the primary school about the situation. That led to the formation of a committee of community leaders as well as school and church officials to work on the issue. A survey identified 150 orphans between the ages of 6 and 13 in the school, many of them hungry and in tattered clothes. Some were abuse victims in need of counseling, some had no money left to pay their school fees. The children were living in different parts of the district, cared for by grandparents or someone else who had taken them in – or, in some cases, they fended for themselves.
In response, the Surviving Child Orphan Trust program was launched in August 2000, and today it is supported as an Advance Special of the United Methodist Church. Though based at the primary school, the trust includes the entire community in caring for the children.
"Our purpose is to work with orphans infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in schools and within the community," said Kandemiri, trust secretary. "The impact of the AIDS pandemic has made the lives of the people of our community, especially children, very miserable and hopeless.
"Our aim is to bring light to the school and its community and to assist orphans materially, physically, morally and spiritually. As teacher-volunteers, we work as caregivers, counselors and skills training officers (for) the pupils for their future sustainability."
Raising AIDS awareness is a critical need, and Kandemiri said one of Surviving Child's goals is to "educate the young girls that it is wrong for an elder to touch them." In parts of Zimbabwe, HIV/AIDS-infected men have been misled into believing they can be cured if they have intimate relations with a virgin. "I'm trying to help the girls realize that they can get (AIDS) too if they do this," Kandemiri said. Young orphans girls are often living in homes of male guardians where abuses occur. "Many of the girls feel that if they tell, they will have no place to stay or go. We have to break the barrier of protectiveness," he said.
Trust officials plan to open a hostel at the school in response to the rising number of sexually abused children, especially small girls. The trust wants a hostel to board the children during the school term so that they would have to go home only during holidays. "This way, we will reduce the number of cases of rape and child sexual abuse," Kandemiri said.
Surviving Child began with 250 students, and that number has continued to rise. "It is not easy to work with orphans or with any traumatized group of society, especially if one is not specially trained for such situations," Kandemiri said.
Six hundred orphans live in and around the Murewa United Methodist Mission Center. The trust's efforts are centered at the Murewa Primary School, which draws more than 1,200 students from throughout Zimbabwe.
Counseling sessions are held twice a week to help the children adapt to being orphans and develop HIV/AIDS awareness. The sessions are designed to empower the children and teach them skills for meeting basic needs.
"God is the source of inspiration (for the) serving and works of charity that we do at the trust and at the school," said the Rev. Elliot Chikwenjere, director of the area Council on Ministries and pastor in charge of the Murewa United Methodist Mission. "We found that the best way to serve the Lord is to be a friend to the marginalized."
The trust provides supplementary feeding in the form of one meal (lunch) per day to 260 students and is providing elementary health care for serious problems that require special practitioners. "We discovered that feeding the orphans was one way to keep them in school; otherwise they would be out in the woods scavenging for food," Chikwenjere said.
The trust also keeps some orphans in school from August through December by paying their school fees of about $900 and providing clothing. Caregivers attached to the trust also assist the children.
Beauty Mutonhi is one such caregiver. "I volunteer to work with the children because they need help. All 600 of the orphans are my children. As a mother, a teacher, a Christian, I put these children in my heart, and I help when needed."
The trust draws much of its financial and material support from First United Methodist Church in Walton, Indiana; Crofton (Md.) United Methodist Church; and Transport Aids-Wheels for Africa, a charitable organization based in Nagoya, Japan. The money helps keep the children in school and provides warm winter clothes, food and medical care.
"But more donations are needed," Kandemiri said. "If we don't get any donated food and other necessities, things are going to get bad." The trust needs children's clothes, shoes and blankets.
Surviving Child officials have identified initiatives to make the trust self-sustaining and to provide the children with opportunities to earn money. Long-term programs include:
The trust also is teaching the students survival skills through three projects focusing on gardening, raising poultry and growing mushrooms. Each projects teaches selling skills.
Besides Surviving Child, the United Methodist Church's Murewa District has two other orphan trusts. A third, the Uzumba Orphan Trust, is no longer under the auspices of the district because of accountability issues, Chikwenjere said.
"Without basic education, the lives of these children are doomed," Kandemiri said. "I hope and pray that my dream will one day be a reality and that these children we nurture will grow into leaders of our nation and continent."
Shortly after meeting with a United Methodist News Service writer and photographer in early November, Kandemiri was injured in an automobile accident. He died Nov. 18.
"I've received a lot in my life," he told UMNS. "What I've done is my way of saying 'thank you.' It is my conviction and my faith that I have to make a change in the lives of these children so that they may have a future."
Photos: 1. Women from the village maintain a vigil over the body of Linda Sinoya's mother, which lies beneath a burial shroud at her home near Dandara Township, Zimbabwe. Ten-year-old Linda joins thousands of children who are left orphaned every day by AIDS. 2. Josiah Kandemiri, a 1999 graduate of Africa University, walks the grounds of the Murewa United Methodist Mission Center in Murewa, Zimbabwe. Kandemiri helped found the Surviving Child Orphan Trust, which cares for about 600 children left orphaned by AIDS. Kandemiri died Nov. 18 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. 3. Two young friends greet visitors at the Surviving Child Orphan Trust in Murewa, Zimbabwe. The United Methodist ministry cares for about 600 children left orphaned by AIDS. UMNS photos by Mike DuBose. Click on any photo to see a larger version.
People can help make a difference by giving to the AIDS Orphan Trust, Advance #982842-6, or UMCOR's Global HIV/AIDS Program Development, Advance #982345-7. Give through a local United Methodist church or send financial contributions to: UMCOR, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Call 1-800-554-8583 to make a credit card donation. You can also donate online. Click here to make a secure online gift.
Source: UMNS. Linda Green is news director of the Nashville, Tenn.-based office of United Methodist News Service.
Please support UMCOR Advance #982345 "United Methodist Global AIDS Fund," Advance #101218, "AIDS Awareness and Children Impacted by HIV/AIDS in Africa," and Advance #982842 "AIDS Orphan Trust." UMCOR encourages you to give through your local United Methodist church. Gifts may also be sent to: UMCOR, PO Box 9068, New York, NY 10087-9068. To make a credit card donation, call (800) 554-8583.
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