Tag: hiv

A couple of images I took today at the XVIII International Aids Conference in Vienna, of AWDF’s grantee partners.

Nana Sekyiamah

Programme Officer (Fundraising & Communications)

A young, energetic graduate responds to a call to volunteer her time and skills as an HIV peer educator and it becomes a life saver even though it did not appear so at that time.

Then 27 years old and newly married, Ihe Nkeiru had just completed the University and was ready to undertake her national youth service. During the orientation UNICEF appealed to the “Corpers”, as these service persons are nicknamed, to volunteer to be trained as HIV&AIDS peer educators. Ihe heeded the call and volunteered to be trained as an HIV&AIDS peer educator. After the training, the peer educators were asked to undergo voluntary counseling and testing as a way of knowing their status and to be able to convince people about the importance of knowing one’s status through voluntary counseling and testing.

It was this gesture that saved her health and life however devastating the news was at that time, Ihe tested positive to the HIV virus. She was devastated and did not know what to do or how to handle the situation. Luckily for her the counselor who had counseled her during the voluntary counseling and testing process was Doris Brenda the ardent HIV&AIDS activist and founder of “Heal the Land”, an HIV&AIDS support group.

Doris applied to the National Youth Service Corps and requested for Ihe to serve her time with “Heal the Land” as a peer educator. With counseling and support from Doris and the support group at “Heal the Land”, Ihe was able to learn strategies to live positively. Ihe completed her National Service with “Heal the land” and gained employment with the organization as an accountant, having graduated with a Bsc Accounting from the University.

Ms Ihe Nkeiru was one of 10 “Corpers” who won awards in Akwa Ibom State in 2008 for working assiduously on the prevention of HIV&AIDS and training secondary school students on HIV&AIDS issues. As a national service person she used her service allowance to purchase multi vitamins which she donated to people living with HIV&AIDS accessing health care services at the University of Oyo teaching hospital.

With her husband living outside the country at the time she tested positive Ihe had not disclosed her status to him or to any other person outside ‘Heal the Land”. When her husband visited about a year and a half after she had tested positive she had the task of disclosing her status to him. It was so difficult that she had to call her counselor and mentor Doris to help her with the disclosure. Upon disclosing her status to her husband he appeared to have received the news calmly was initially supportive until she fell ill a month later with TB. That was the beginning of her woes, her husband’s attitude changed towards her and he finally abandoned her at home and never came back. Then the tough issue of disclosing her status to a family member arose. With the support of her counselor again, Ihe broke the news to her brother who was very understanding and supportive. Her brother travelled for miles to see her when she suffered a partial stroke and had nobody with her, he asked the hospital where she was receiving treatment to transfer her to a bigger hospital near his home where she received the best of care. When she got better her brother took her to his home and nursed her till she was well enough to go back to work.

Today Ihe is well and helping to run “Heal the Land”, a support group of about 50 women living with HIV&AIDS, as well as undertaking outreach programmes to very remote villages in the State of Akwa Ibom of Nigeia where she provides much needed information on HIV&AIDS as well as caring for those living with HIV&AIDS.

Ihe is determined and passionate about touching and saving lives. She believes that women should equip themselves to face life. In her mind’s eye, young women especially need to equip themselves to face the future especially with all the advancement and turbulence being encountered in the world now.

AWDF supports “Heal the Land” to provide skills training to women living with HIV&AIDS as well as deepen awareness around HIV&AIDS issues. With the support of AWDF, “Heal the Land” has trained treatment literacy/adherence counselors, two of whom are permanently stationed at the St. Luke’s hospital and formed an HIV&AIDS club at one of the project Communities, Mbo in the Oron local government Area of the State of Akwa Ibom to provide continuous HIV awareness in the community.

By: Beatrice Boakye Yiadom

Grants Manager, AWDF

The display of youthful exuberance, intelligence, confidence and beauty attracted me to this young lady sitting in the mist of older ladies and who occasionally would chip in useful information about the organisation’s activities at a meeting with some staff members of Heal the Land Initiative, a grantee of AWDF at Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria. Ms. Peace Augustines is the third of six children born to Mr & Mrs Augustine from Abia States in Nigeria. Peace as she is affectionately called is 21 years old and lost both parents in 2002 to HIV&AIDs.

Soon after the death of her parents and at a young age of 16, Peace begun to feel the impact of HIV &AIDS as it perpetuates the cycle of poverty. As an orphan from a poor home she and her siblings were thrown out of their parent’s home, she abandoned her education and each one of them had to take care of themselves. The issue of survival becomes very critical here! Peace was lucky enough to have moved into her grandmother’s house, at least there shelter was assured, but then she had to assume a new role as head of the household at the expense of her education. Peace quickly found her survival strategy to raise income for her household’s upkeep; street hawking of pure water in the busy streets of Abia State was her new income generation activity. It was during one of her hawking activities that she was spotted by Ms. Doris Ugwu, the Executive Director of Heal the Land Initiative who also knew about her parents death. Doris, knowing this young lady decided to give her a chance to live a better life. Doris is HIV&AIDS positive and the first to publicly announce her status in Akwa Ibom. Understanding the impact of the disease on families and children especially, Doris decided to seek permission from Peace’s grandmother to allow her to sponsor Peace’s education whilst she continued to live with her grandmother to sit her West African Examination Council (WAEC) papers.

In 2008, Peace moved to live with Doris in Akwa Ibom State. She has written the joint matriculation examination board and will soon be writing her aptitude test to guarantee her a place in the university. Peace is a very ambitious young lady; she is looking forward to going to the University of Oyo to read psychology. She also dreams of being a philosopher, Peace believes she possesses a wealth of knowledge which she would like to pass on to other people to shape their lives for the better.

Peace has increased her knowledge on HIV&AIDs through her personal life and also through her engagement with HEAL the Land Initiative where she volunteers her time when she is not in school. Obviously Peace has had huge challenges in life, from her childhood to date; experiencing the suffering and death of her parents and its repercussion on her growing up. She said to me “It doesn’t matter what you go through in life you just don’t have to give up. I have learnt to improve on my knowledge, be vigilant and not to be taken advantages of by boys or men and to trust in God”.

• She has learnt never to stigmatise anyone no matter his or her situation.
• She has learnt to give back, and so she also wants to rescue other children from the street.
• She has built her confidence level; to her living positively is not the end of one’s life and she want to support others to live positively.
• She has learnt that maturity is not in age but in mind and character because that is the powerful tool one needs to win the community over.
• She has learnt to make friends she can influence positively and vice versa.

Unfortunately, not many children are or will be as lucky as Peace to be rescued off the street and given a decent life and an education. There are many more children who are continuously exposed to the hazards of ‘streetism’. It is therefore important that as development workers, women’s activists and donor organizations we begin to rethink the factors which fuel the spread of HIV such as gender inequality, conflict, migration, poverty, exclusion and the denial of basic rights as factors that cut right across the development agenda. Approximately 99% of those infected by HIV&AIDS live in developing countries and 12 million girls and boys are orphaned as a result of HIV&AIDS. HIV&AIDS is now one of the most powerful barriers to achieving the 2015 development targets in Africa, where it is now the leading cause of death.

Peace is a peer educator in schools and her community but how effective can she be if her actions and those of organisations like Heal the Land Initiative are not supported by decision and policy maker and all of us?

P.S: Peace is not positive

Nafi Chinery

Capacity Building Officer

AWDF