Imagine being born HIV positive or to a positive parent! Imagine being raised by your frail grandmother (GM) because you lost your parents to AIDS. Now imagine having to take ARV medication on an empty stomach because your grandmother is unable to, or struggles to provide food. 810 OVCs infected/affected by HIV have to confront this reality on daily basis. YWCAA works with 90 GM led households comprising an estimate of 9 OVCs aged 3 - 14 years in Makueni, Kisumu and Homabay Counties.
Without regular food, OVCs face numerous challenges including; deteriorating health and inconsistent uptake of ARVs. Due to the ever increasing number of OVCs under the care of frail grandmothers who are unable to provide them with basic needs the OVCs are forced to engage into risk activities to earn a living. Despite YWCAA's efforts on partly providing monthly nutritional support to some OVCs households in poor rural areas in its project areas, the grandmothers still need support.
Food is a critical factor in ensuring OVCs adherence to Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART), improved health, attendance and concentration in school and their caregivers/grandmothers have peace of mind to engage in less riskier means of earning a living such as running small income generating activities to support their dependents. Therefore, YWCAA seeks to mobilize resources towards provision of nutritional support to the grandmothers' led household on monthly basis & conduct annual feeding program.
By supporting 90 grandmother-led households through provision of nutritional support to OVCs, we will ease the burden of caring for OVCs, boost the health of those infected by HIV and keep them on anti-retro viral therapy. This will also encourage the OVCs to stay in school and focus on their education. Finally, this initiative will help reduce chances of engaging into risky activities for food and in turn reduce new HIV infection among the OVCs, and address poverty & hopelessness.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
