What we do

1. HIV Prevention and Stigma Reduction
   From the beginning, HIV/AIDS has been accompanied by fear, ignorance, stigma and denial, leading to secrecy and stigmatization of those infected or affected by the disease.
   
   HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns play a critical role in changing people’s attitudes and behavior, particularly in African where most HIV infections are due to sexual contact. In some instances, stigmatization has resulted in people living with HIV/AIDS and their families being denied access to basic services like education and health.
   
   Through the partners and community-based organizations, HACI is working to raise people’s awareness of the disease and change attitudes to people living with HIV/AIDS and their families.

2. Education
   As parents fall ill or succumb to AIDS, children drop out of school to take on family responsibilities. The disease also drains away family resources, making it difficult for children to continue with their schooling as educational material and school fees become out of reach. HACI is helping children impacted by the pandemic to access education and life skills by providing them with educational material and paying school fees, in addition to helping out-of-school youths acquire vocational skills with a view to enabling them earn a living.

3. Basic Needs Assistance
   In Africa, most AIDS infections are due to sexual contact. This has resulted in high mortality rates among adults - most of whom are within the reproductive age - consigning thousands of children to vulnerability. HACI is involved in supporting community-based actions that contribute to reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS on children and their families. The support provided includes basic needs of individual orphans and vulnerable children, that is, food/nutritional assistance, school fees, uniform, books and other stationery, clothes, shelter and medical needs.

4. Health
   High HIV/AIDS infection rates in African have led to increased mortality rates and enormous pressure on the already overburdened public medical services. HACI continues to provide medical support to the sick with a view to prolonging the child-parent relationship. The goal is to decrease the period of vulnerability experienced by the child and postpone the age at which the child is orphaned. Prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections, along with better nutrition and food security, prolong the lives of infected parents and HACI has continued to ensure people living with HIV/AIDS have access to good nutrition and medicine with a view to ensuring they live long enough to care for their children. HACI is currently working on a policy paper on access to treatment.

5. Psycho-Social Support
   Children experience anxiety and fear when their parents are sick, then grief and loss when they die. In Africa, thousands of children affected by HIV/AIDS are faced with trauma due to their parents’ poor health or death. HACI is helping them cope with this emotional and psychological stress through support to psychosocial support programs such as counseling. The initiative, through partners and community-based organizations, provides training and counseling skills to adults in regular contact with children, as well as counseling to orphans and vulnerable children and referrals to psychosocial support professionals.

6. Community Mobilization
   HACI provides technical support in community mobilization to community-based organizations dealing with people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS in order to garner support for children orphaned or made vulnerable by the disease.

7. Preparing families for Transition
   As AIDS ravages the African continent, the number of children who lose their parents to the disease continues to grow. It is estimated that more than 11 million African children have been orphaned by the disease. These children face a lot of social and economic challenges when their parents die without planning for their future. Some get dispossessed, while others are pushed into the streets by grinding poverty resulting from the loss of breadwinners and guardians. In order to prevent children from slipping through the social safety net, HACI is helping parents plan their futures by appointing guardians and writing wills. A memory book project has been established to help people living with HIV/AIDS prepare their families for transition.

8. Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Training
   Each year, more than 600,000 infants become infected with HIV/AIDS, mainly in developing countries. Since the beginning of the epidemic, 5.1 million children worldwide have been infected with HIV. Mother-to-child transmission is said to be responsible for more than 90% of these infections. Two-thirds of the infections are believed to occur during pregnancy and delivery and about one-third occur through breast-feeding. HACI actively supports programs aimed at preventing mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus. It is hoped that this effort will go a long way in preventing the unborn child from contracting HIV/AIDS.

9. Income-Generation Activities
   HIV/AIDS has resulted in widespread poverty due to high medical bills, inability of the sick to engage in economic activities and the death of breadwinners. In order to put families back on their feet, HACI supports income-generation activities that target those affected by the epidemic in various countries through training in business management and the provision of capital for setting up such activities.

10. Advocacy
    HACI seeks to strengthen coalitions of voices from a range of organizations to speak-out on behalf of HIV/AIDS-affected children and reduce the stigma associated with this pandemic. Consequently, the initiative has developed a communication and advocacy policy based on five principles:

    • Stress the importance of the rights and needs of orphans and vulnerable children within the broader HIV/AIDS agenda.
    • Emphasize interventions that are effective in meeting children’s needs and get them expanded.
    • Encourage political commitment and concrete action plans among African governments to address particular needs of children affected by AIDS.
    • Reduce the stigma of HIV/AIDS through engaging key groups at the country level.
    • Push for expanded funding at all levels for orphans and vulnerable children. Current resources are inadequate to meet the current need.