I graduated from Wes in 1973. Fast forward 31 years to 2004: I left a job with The Wall Street Journal to come to Swaziland as a Peace Corps volunteer.
This tiny Southern African country has the world’s highest rate of HIV; 42.6% of adults are infected. After a year living in a rural Swazi community doing AIDS work, I was asked by the National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA) to create a program through which young Americans can help sponsor families of AIDS orphans. In a country of only a million people, there are already 70,000 orphans, and that number is projected to nearly double in five years.
The result is Young Heroes, found at http://youngheroes.org.sz. Through it, individuals and groups can feed a child for only $19 a month, or supply food and clothing for only $29. Our goal is to motivate students on campuses like Wesleyan to reach out and help their less fortunate peers here. Launched in February 2006, Young Heroes has already attracted sponsorship for over 100 children.
That’s crucial, because the extended family that traditionally cares for orphans is disappearing here. An entire generation of parents is dying. Children are either left to fend themselves or are in the care of aging grandparents who are too old to work. They lack the most basic necessities.
How can the Wesleyan community get involved?
Most of all, we need sponsors because we’re signing up new orphan families every day. There are dozens of ways that Wes students as individuals or in groups could raise money and become sponsors of a family.
But it’s just as important to help us spread the word, because we’re running Young Heroes on a shoestring. Tell your friends at other schools, your family at home, and the groups you’re involved in about the program and urge them to visit our Web site. Anything you do to help is going to mean more than you know to children who have nothing.
Siybonga kakhulu yekusitisa, as we say here. Thanks greatly for the help.
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