Not Enough Help Available

Swaziland is trying to help these children, but the resources are too few and the needs are too great.

In many communities you'll find adults who volunteer to run NCPs – Neighbourhood Care Points – where the orphans can come to get one meal of porridge a day. Just as important, these volunteers (mostly women) can keep an eye on the children and see that they're all right. At the best NCPs, volunteers have established informal schools, so the orphans also get basic instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic. The NCP volunteers are inspiring, because they give what they can when they have so little themselves. But with their own families, responsibilities and burdens, they cannot shoulder the care of the orphans alone.

The government is helping, too, with the OVC Fund (Orphans and Vulnerable Children). This pays the cost of at least part of a child's school fees. But not every child has a caretaker who can arrange this for them. In some places, the OVC Fund doesn't cover the entire cost of school and the family is too poor to pay the rest.

In the same manner, children who are HIV positive can receive anti-retroviral therapy for free. However, these life-saving drugs can be difficult to get because many people live too far from a clinic. And because the drugs are so strong, a person taking them has to have a plentiful supply of food and water – two things in very short supply in Swaziland.

But the most important source of support these children have is themselves and their own resilience. The orphans of AIDS are strong and brave – they have to be. They make do with what they have, even though what they have is so little. They work hard, taking care of their homesteads – cleaning, cooking, washing, growing gardens, tending cattle. And they play and laugh and sing together.

Even though their only meal is often one bowl of corn porridge per day… if they have food. Their shoes, if they have any, are hand-me-downs that don't fit. Their only toy is a soccer ball made from plastic bags wadded into a sphere and covered with tape. Too often, they watch their friends go off to school in the morning when they have to stay behind.

You've seen these images on TV, and they're easy to ignore. But they're just as easy to do something about.

You can sponsor a family of children through Young Heroes today.