Center for Church and Global AIDS

"Training the Trainers” for Rural Health Care in Kenya

Being a church leader in Kenya, where one of every four adults is HIV positive and 11% of the children are AIDS orphans, is to experience heartbreak daily. For Bishop William Muriuki Mwongo it also means seeking to help a “child-headed family” of five led by a 13-year-old boy, as well as caring for five children orphaned by the bishops’ deceased brother and sister. Confronting the crisis of HIV/AIDS in rural Africa, Bishop Mwongo has created a partnership between the Center for the Church and Global AIDS and the Kaaga Synod of the Methodist Church in Kenya to train community health workers.

This program of “training the trainers” addresses the rural health needs of persons living with HIV and AIDS in 174 churches in 16 circuits. With the numbers of infected and affected growing daily, the Center is seeking additional funds to sustain and expand the program. By focusing on training community health workers, the goal is to increase home and community-based care, as well as promote prevention.

Kenya

Helping Provide Pediatric AIDS Care

Tragically, pediatric HIV and AIDS has been overlooked throughout most of the world. Many children with HIV never celebrate their 2nd birthday, and most die by the age of 5. Age-appropriate anti-retroviral medicine has not been made available, with parents being expected to cut pills into three portions or to crush the medicine and create a liquid. This proves both dangerous and impossible, when you consider the impoverished of this world often live in inadequate housing or huts with no clean water.

Working closely with N. M. Samuel, M.D., professor of medicine in Chennai, India, donors to the Center have provided funds for his Pediatric AIDS Center in rural India where generic drugs for children are being used. Funds are also provided for medicine to stop the transmission of HIV from mother to baby during childbirth. Special health camps providing eye and skin care for children living with HIV and AIDS have been supported via the Center.

Sharing Hope with AIDS Orphans

The worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic has resulted in more than 18 million orphans and vulnerable children, with 6,100 new orphans added each day. In Kenya it is estimated that 11% of all children have been orphaned by this crisis.

Center contributions support Neema Children’s home, an AIDS orphanage in Eldoret, Kenya. This program was initiated, thanks to a partnership between the Center, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Through the sale of heart necklaces, the Center also assists an orphanage in Cape Town, South Africa. Throughout Africa there is an urgent need to upgrade the care, nutrition, and education of children, with special attention for children who have become orphans due to the AIDS pandemic.

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Sponsoring Seminary AIDS Conferences in Northeast India

For the past seven years, the Center has been involved in encouraging theological colleges and seminaries to address HIV and AIDS in India. Seminars have been sponsored at United Theological College in Bangalore, Leonard Theological College in Japalbur, as well as a nation-wide gathering of church leaders in Mumbai and the top leadership of all the theological schools of India associated with the Senate of Serampore College, held in Mizoram.

As a result of a follow-up conference in Calcutta, Eastern Theological College in Jorhat, Assam, has spearheaded a consortium effort to educate church and seminary leadership in remote Northeast India. This region of India is particularly hard-hit with the AIDS pandemic, with numbers of persons being infected rising dramatically. The Center has helped sponsor four programs designed to integrated HIV and AIDS materials into the curriculum. As a result, the theological schools of this region have united together and developed plans for the next three years, and the Center is seeking to raise $22,000 to assist them in this vital mission to save life.

Offering a Special Edition Upper Room

Persons infected and affected by HIV and AIDS face special spiritual challenges as they struggle with issues of health and caring for themselves and their loved ones. Governments can and must bring needed medicines and other programs, but the church has a special role in providing spiritual comfort and consolation to persons in need. Too often persons feel isolated from their churches and other faith communities, due to stigma and feelings of being abandoned by family, friends, and even God. When old, outdated, and battered copies of The Upper Room daily devotional guide were discovered in the waiting room of the Maua Methodist Hospital in Kenya, the Center contacted Upper Room Ministries about being partners in publishing a special collection of prayers and meditations. As a result, a special international, intercultural, and interdenominational devotional booklet has been published, which is being distributed free of charge. One million copies will be printed, including editions in English, French, Portuguese, Kiswahili, IsiZulu, and many other languages around the world. A number of meditations were written by persons living with HIV and AIDS and/or their families.

Upper Room

Prayers for Encouragement

Giving Love Gifts to Persons Living with HIV and AIDS

Many persons with HIV and AIDS report that worse than having the virus is the way people treat them. When faced with life-threatening disease, persons need to know compassion, counseling and care--to be touched and to be affirmed. Often impoverished and lonely, they yearn for more than medicine.

If you visit a men's ward, you may find mothers, wives, and/or daughters caring for the patient. If you go to a woman's ward, one discovers women often die alone. The Center provides gifts of toys to children and clothing (saris for women and shirts for men) in a large AIDS hospital in India. Each year about $8,000 is raised to purchase gifts for the approximately 800 persons.

Mobilizing Christian College Teachers to Combat AIDS

Climaxing a first-ever AIDS workshop for Christian college professors from throughout India, 76 university professors joined hands, made a solemn pledge, and sang “We Shall Overcome.”

The three day event, sponsored by the Center, was held in conjunction with the 170th anniversary of Madras Christian College, near Chennai. Pledging themselves to a nine-point plan, the university professors resolved they would return to their campus to educate students about prevention, offer value based education centered on human sexuality, train teachers to be counselors, reach out to neighborhood schools, uphold human rights of those infected and affected, and form Red Ribbon Clubs at each of their institutions.

Urgently needed is funding to support follow-up conferences to assist in the mobilizing of Christian college teachers in India to combat AIDS.

Publishing Books, Articles and Other Educational Resources

The Center’s Executive Director, Donald E. Messer, has published a considerable variety of books and articles along with newspaper commentaries and interviews addressing the global AIDS pandemic. Primary are his two books, Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis (Fortress) which was launched at the House of Lords in London in March, 2004, and Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith (Fortress), co-authored with former Senators George McGovern and Bob Dole, and released at the National Press Club (and on national C-Span TV) in Washington, D.C., in September, 2005.

Thanks to gifts to the Center, subsidized low-cost editions of Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence are being republished in 2007 both in India and Burma. Messer has also been responsible for helping edit special editions of The Upper Room “Prayers of Encouragement,” and the Circuit Rider for local pastors. For a complete listing of books and articles, click Books and Articles.

Providing Theological Education HIV and AIDS Seminars Globally

Challenging attitudes and actions that contribute to stigma and discrimination must be priorities of Christians. Fundamental to changing the church’s behavior from condemnation to compassion, and from apathy to action, is to educate and activate theological teachers, seminarians, and church leaders in responding compassionately and competently to the HIV and AIDS pandemic.

The Center promotes a theology of life, not death, through theological education programs for laity, clergy, and seminarians, in partnership with other faith-based organizations. The Center assists in sponsoring theological education programs that especially focus on prevention, care, and treatment, with special attention to the role religion plays in both creating and combating stigma and discrimination.

The Center has assisted with theological education seminars in South Africa, Kenya, Barbados, Uruguay, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia, Singapore, and Kenya. Upcoming events are being planned in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as funds become available.

Providing Education and Food for HIV Infected Women & Children

The Center provides assistance to families living with HIV and AIDS through the Tambaram Community Development Society. Center monies are needed to provide school bags and educational kits for 425 poor children (many with HIV or having parents with HIV), as well as assistance to their families for basic necessities of food and health. This program reaches out to the caste of dalits or untouchables in twelve villages, creating opportunities for education, self-employment, self-empowerment, and messages of HIV/AIDS prevention. Impoverished women formerly forced into survival sex as commercial sex workers now have found alternative employment. Center volunteers have delivered food and blankets to the people in need, most of whom are living in mud and tin huts, and some even in temporary tents erected after the tsunami swept away their homes. .