Increased Care and Support to Orphans and Vulnerable Children in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa

is a cooperative agreement being implemented by AVSI in the countries of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya with funding from USAID through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and from AVSI.

Success Stories

Peer HIV Educator Joan Lamwaka

Since she was seven, Lamwaka Joan, has lived with her grandmother and siblings in Gulu District in the northern region of Uganda, after both of her parents died of AIDS.

A few years ago, AVSI came in contact with Joan through her grandmother and immediately took note that Joan was always sick and weak. With the encouragement of AVSI social workers, Joan went for testing and it was confirmed that this twelve year old girl had been living with the virus since birth. Joan sought frequent counseling and psychosocial support through AVSI and grew to accept her status. Voluntarily, Joan decided to testify publicly about her status and to share her experience with other children.

Today, Joan is very busy sensitizing and counseling other children. Through her testimony, Joan conveys a message of positive living and explains how it is possible to live with one’s families while protecting them from infection. Attitudes have changed as a direct result of Joan’s example and the interactive messages embedded in songs and plays that involve other children under AVSI support. Children can now see that even with HIV/AIDS, they can still live meaningful lives and be useful to both their families and the community.

Joan continues to be supported by her grandmother who sells foodstuff along the road and maintains a vegetable garden for home consumption. AVSI Gulu supports the family with extra food like milk and eggs to supplement Joan’s nutrition since she is on ARV drugs and receives palliative care whenever necessary. Joan is presently in Secondary Two at Pope John Paul II school in Laliya, Gulu. She values life, education and her family. She appreciates her family’s willingness to accept and support her despite her sickness. She thanks AVSI for paying her school fees, giving her medical support and food. Above all, she gives glory to God for all these things. She believes it’s by God’s grace that she has lived to this date with support from friends and sympathizers. She hopes to succeed in her education and continue helping others.

Lessons Learned

Joan’s story is in essence a typical one. As a double-orphan who is also HIV positive herself, Joan is particularly vulnerable. Her story is a reminder of the importance of voluntary counseling and testing for orphans and vulnerable children who are at high-risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Joan’s ability to study and serve as a peer educator depends on her health and nutrition, which are needs that could have been overlooked if the root cause had not been determined. Testing should never be done in a vacuum, but the child should always be accompanied by a loving adult and helped in the process of accepting the results. This case also reflects the necessity of coordination and communication among different service providers in each area; AVSI will always look for ways to link beneficiaries to other services to increase the impact of a single intervention. In Joan’s case, the nutritional, educational and psycho-social support provided by AVSI were supplemented by the distribution of ARV’s by a collaborating partner.