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Summary: Save the Children’s HIV/AIDS programmes in four African countries help youngsters stay in school, get health care and food, cope with their grief and trauma, and learn skills to earn an income. In return, many of the children help educate their peers about the disease and volunteer to visit those sick from the disease in their homes, doing for them what they may have trouble doing for themselves.
Around the world, AIDS has a child’s face. Some 15 million children under 17 have lost one or both parents to the disease, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa. These children, especially the girls, must often leave school to earn money to care for their siblings and the sick. They usually lack access to basic health care and are at serious risk for exploitation, poverty and discrimination. To resist the trend, Save the Children’s HIV/AIDS programmes in four African countries help youngsters stay in school, get health care and food, cope with their grief and trauma, and learn skills to earn an income. In return, many of the children help educate their peers about the disease and volunteer to visit those sick from the disease in their homes, doing for them what they may have trouble doing for themselves. In Ethiopia, teens who have volunteered to become “advocates of hope” are demonstrating what World AIDS Day really means by making a difference in their communities. Fourteen teens were given digital cameras for a week in August and asked to document their lives and ways they were keeping the promise of fighting AIDS by caring for one another, their families, their communities and themselves. Senait and Anetneh, were two of the volunteers. We asked them to convey in words and pictures their hopes for themselves and their community. See their photos, and learn how they’re keeping the promise of fighting HIV/AIDS.