Care for Aids

Today was a beautiful day spent doing home visits with Care for Aids. This organization is amazing. Just 3 years ago, 3 college students from Vanderbilt came to Kenya to film a documentary and met Cornel and Duncan - 2 people with a vision for reaching out to those with HIV/Aids who are being shunned by their families and communities. The college guys felt led to help, returned to the US to fundraise and within 6 months the first center was opened. Now there are 10 Centers with 25 additional locations identified (but funding is not yet available). I am so amazed at what has been accomplished by two humble Kenyans and three American college students who chose to follow God's urging.

As simply as I can explain it, CFA identifies communities with significant numbers of HIV positive people and finds a church in the community with a heart to serve those people. In each

"cohort group" 80 clients are selected and they go through a nine-month program together. The program has three areas of focus: spiritual, health, and economic empowerment. They come to the church one day each week for one-on-one spiritual and health counseling and receive a small amount of food (the HIV medications have extreme side effects if taken on an empty stomach). Twice each month they attend empowerment seminars which help them develop a skill of some kind or start a business so they will be self-supporting by the end of the program. The final component are the home visits which is what we helped with today. Each client is visited at least once each month in their home so the staff can assess their living conditions. The home visits also have a social impact because many of these people are shunned and discriminated against and it helps for their neighbors to see them having visitors.

Today we visited 5 different homes. The living conditions were unimaginable in some of the homes (but all were well-kept and clean). Several of the homes were made of mud with no electricity or water - just one room (about 8 feet by 8 feet). These clients were just in their third month of the program - most appeared fairly healthy but most had no income at all. Some of their children couldn't attend school because they couldn't buy the uniforms or afford the small fees.

There are now 10 centers (each serving 80 clients at this time). Each center runs on a budget of just $1,500 per month. I am just amazed at the work that is being done here for a relatively small amount of money - with incredible, life-changing results for these people.

Our power is out (has been out all day and it's now dark). Hopefully it will be back up and running by the morning. Tomorrow we head to Jikaze - the refuge camp that we visited in 2009. We are planting a tree at each of the 145 homes there and then heading to Nairobi in the late afternoon for a quick trip to the market and then dinner at the home of a friend. It will likely be a late night, so I will not have internet access again until Saturday.

Thanks again for your prayers and support of this adventure... Much love from Kenya!