Charities Give Hope to Africa's Poor

May 20, 2004 -- Last year, UNICEF released a report documenting for the first time the life circumstances of the children in Africa who have been orphaned by AIDS.

These children are in desperate need of every basic supply that is taken as a given in most industrialized countries. They have no food, medical care, clothes, are often left homeless. Organizations like UNICEF and Save the Children have set up charities to help alleviate the suffering.

They raise money for school fees, schoolbooks and supplies, school lunches and health care. Funding is also needed to provide counseling for children who have lost parents to AIDS.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has already orphaned a generation of children, and now seems set to orphan generations more. Today, more than 11 million children under the age of 15 living in sub-Saharan African have been robbed of one or both parents by HIV/AIDS, UNICEF said.

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Seven years from now, that number is expected to have doubled. At that point, anywhere from 15 percent to 25 percent of the children in a dozen sub-Saharan African countries will be orphans — the vast majority of them parentless because of the deadly epidemic that has ravaged so much of the continent's population.

The Key to Solving the Crisis

More than 30 million people are now infected with the disease. The centerpiece of UNICEF's strategy is education. Most African countries charge school fees averaging about $250 a year, which is sometimes that is the per capita income of the average African family.

And while those fees are high for many families in Africa, they almost certainly bar children who are orphaned and alone and have no support system. A few countries, like Kenya, have abolished these fees and the school attendance rates have skyrocketed.

Education gives orphans perhaps their only opportunity to escape the conditions of desperate poverty. Because of the huge stigma surrounding AIDS, schools are the most effective means of teaching children about how to prevent transmission of the disease.