New Hope HIV/AIDS Orphanage

Help me bring New Hope!

At the end of April I was fortunate enough to be sent to East Africa to participate in the Bank's nascent 5-day volunteer programme - working with AIDS orphans in Mombasa, Kenya.

In Kenya, the biggest killer is HIV AIDS and the statistics just blow you away. 15% of adults now have HIV AIDS (more than 1 in 7 people) and reportedly 85% of prostitutes. The population of Kenya is only 32m, yet a full 2.5m have HIV AIDS - proportionally the equivalent of around 100m Chinese. 700 people die from the disease every day.

The sociological impact of HIV AIDS is bewildering - between 900k and 1.3m children in Kenya have been orphaned by HIV. With their parents gone, many children are forced onto the streets to earn a living for themselves and their remaining brothers, sisters, grandparents.

Education has been hit hard by the AIDS epidemic - not only are many children on the streets but, on top of this, 18 teachers die every day of AIDS. The lack of education exacerbates the problem of raising awareness of the disease, its methods of transmission and its treatment.
There is a common belief that HIV AIDS is a curse, not a virus and young girls are especially at risk due to a widespread belief that AIDS can be cured by having sexual intercourse with a virgin, which of course further accelerates the spread of the disease.

Working in the orphanage highlighted to me the incredible challenges that Kenya faces in dealing with this disease. The children lack many basics such as pencils, pens, books etc. They use razor blades as both pencil sharpeners and as erasers to correct mistakes on paper. Food is also very basic - lunch each day is a simple combination of rice and beans, maize and beans or Ugali and beans (Ugali is a local East African corn meal paste that has no taste but is cheap and filling).

Leaving Kenya was very hard - I felt pained by the fact that I could not do more to help the children from New Hope orphanage and by the fact that the lack of infrastructure makes their fight for survival so much more difficult than it need be. Yet at the same time, I was touched, humbled and encouraged by the strength and positivity of these young children who were studying hard to make their lives better.

This web page and accompanying video
(http://www.markjulien.com/newhope.wmv) is my small effort to help the New Hope school to raise funds. If you can spare something, then many thanks in advance.

Warm regards,

Mark.
Standard Chartered Bank HIV Champion
http://www.standardchartered.com/sustainability/community_HIV.html
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Mark Julien New Hope Video: http://www.markjulien.com/newhope.wmv
New Hope Orphanage Website: http://www.newhopechildren.org/
Mark Julien Kenya Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.julien/