By Catharina van den Bosch | DIrector
Meet two of our re-unified children.
Siblings of resp. 14 (Girl) and 11 year (Boy) old were several years in our residential care and we succeeded to re-unifiy them with their grandparent about a year and a half ago.
Their story is a miracle.
They are complete orphans and in the first few years of their stay in residential care their grandfather would sometimes come and visit, but this stopped for unknown reason. When we started our re-unification programm we didn't seem to be able to locate the grandparents anymore, so we thought they may have died.
But just when we had given up the grandfather turned up at our gate and apologized for his long absence. He had been having health issues and for sa long time he was sick, but now he was much better and he had told his wife that he was going to look for his grandkids. He even had thought that he would beg us to give him at least one of the kids. He was pleasantly surprised that we had been looking for him with the intention of family re-unification!
Both siblings are sero-positive and on anti-retroviral treatment which is free of charge in Ethiopia. We took him to the hospital where the nurse spent some time explaining their medical issues and it was no problem for him.
The 14 year old girl is mentally slow and behaves like a seven year old, in school she didn't make a lot of progress and in residential care she started to display some challenging behaviour. We hoed that rural living would be easier for her. We explained everything honestly with the grandfather and he had no problem with all these issues. He said: THey are mine and I will care for them."
The 11 year old boy is very bright and after the initial period of adjustment to rural living, he is coping very well and is making his grandfather proud.
The girl has her ups and downs but we visit on a regular basis to make sure everything is okay. We also advise via telephone when needed. But she is a lot better already.
We strengthened this family with some additional scheep and financial assistance and they now seem to be coping well. A fine example that keeping family ties is very important for orphans. Feeling loved and being part of the extended family is very valuable for their development.
Thank you so much for supporting us in bringing institutionalised orphans back into their families.
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