Thank you
The current situaton:
BACHO-K currently takes care of 312 orphans and vulnerable children and youth. Only about 120 of them have a sponsor. To allow us to keep all these children in school, we need your support. Can you help It only takes $40 per month to make a difference in the life of a child.
History:
HIV/AIDS cases were first noticed at the fish landing site at Kansensero and Lukunyu in the 1980’s. Since then fish landing sites have continued to have a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS cases. Unfortunately, the same is true for Rwenshama.
Due to the many challenges to have proper access to information and resources on HIV awareness, and the difficulty for many people in Rwenshama to access medical facilities (due to distance and danger of traveling through the national park), many HIV-infected adults were not able to avail themselves of the life-saving HIV medications, and have already died of AIDS. To make matters worse, there are a lot of other confounding factors, such as re-marriage of abandoned/widowed/divorced women, absence of love and security in the families, family disputes, and unwanted pregnancy of trafficked/sexually exploited girls.
In addition to HIV/AIDS, many children have lost one or both parents due to the wildlife, in particular hippos, crocodiles, buffalos, lions and elephants that live in the area.
As a result, many orphans and other vulnerable children were left behind without care and support. These children got involved in small fish picking at the fishing site in order to feed themselves. Some got involved with pick-pocketing and participating in anti-social activities and unlawful activities. Therefore, BACHO decided early on to set up programs to provide care, support and protection not only in our own homes, but also in the orphan dormitories that were constructed in the past few years (click here to learn more).
Among these children and youth, there are ~ 50 who are living with HIV. BACHO provides them with many levels of support: nutritional supplements, education, access to life-saving antiretroviral medicines, clothing, housing, counseling and psychosocial support, and love.
Support for these programs has been coming from Sahaya International (USA) and Sahaya-Sawes (Belgium/Europe).
You can help! You can become a sponsor. As a sponsor, you will receive a profile of the child, and regular updates (such as a picture, letter, school marks, and sometimes a video).
Basic sponsorship: $40 per month (or $480 per year).
The cost for most orphans from kindergarten through secondary school is on average $40 per month ($480 per year).
Higher education:
The cost varies, so we can inform you of more details.
Below are some pictures of some of these children and youth. To see more pictures, here are some galleries by Sahaya supporter Jon Sachs:
(click on individual picture to see enlarged version)
