Namibia

AIDS Care Trust (ACT)

AIDS Care Trust (ACT) is Namibia’s oldest AIDS service organization. It offers HIV prevention-education, support to people living with HIV and AIDS, and care to affected family members. Support from the SLF is offered through ACT’s “Value for Life” programme and includes life-skills education and behaviour change communication workshops for out-of-school youth, the training of peer-educators, and livelihood support (including business and vocational skills) to very poor households living with HIV. To holistically address the challenges faced by Namibian families in high-risk environments, ACT works closely with religious and traditional leaders and incorporates a focus on drug and alcohol abuse in all training programmes. The organization also stresses gender issues and human rights, including the tragically high prevalence of violence and abuse. SLF support also covers some administrative costs, including salaries.

Catholic AIDS Action

When Archbishop Hausiku declared at the launch of Catholic AIDS Action (CAA) in 1998 that “AIDS is a disease, not a sin,” he paved the way for AIDS-education, outreach, testing, home-based care, treatment and positive-living activities throughout Namibia. Catholic AIDS Action has grown since then, but at their core they still rely on their home-based careare volunteers (2,200 in total) who provide a wide range of services to about 8,000 HIV-positive clients and almost 18,000 orphans and vulnerable children annually, regardless of faith. Volunteers receive extensive training and supplies for their work, but almost no monetary compensation. Yet most of these hard-working volunteers are as poor as their sick neighbours; almost all are women who care for orphans in their own homes; and some are HIV-positive themselves.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation is supporting Catholic AIDS Action’s efforts to provide practical compensation – through the purchase of supplies and uniforms with organization’s logo and design – to home-based care volunteers in the Caprivi region of Namibia. In this way, volunteers receive practical compensation, stigma is reduced through the bright display of the organization’s name and logo, and the Caprivi volunteers, who are among the nation’s poorest, benefit from an income-generating project.

Tate Kalunga Mweneka Omukithi Wo "AIDS" Moshilongo Shetu (TKMOAMS)

Namibia’s HIV prevalence is highest in the rural north of the country, where TKMOAMS has been providing home-based care since 1996. Its work spans a huge area, where most children live with their grandparents, usually because one or both of their parents died of AIDS.  TKMOAMS, whose acronym stands for “Almighty Father help us stop the AIDS pandemic in our country,” partners with over 260 volunteers in thirteen communities who offer counselling, HIV-education, human rights advocacy (for example, to ensure that all orphans attend school), treatment literacy, referral services, and spiritual support. They collaborate with the Bicycle Empowerment Network in Namibia to refurbish second-hand bicycles, sell them as an income-generating project, and offer bicycle-ambulances to their volunteers for transporting clients and conducting home visits.

With the help of their volunteers, TKMOAMS also operates six soup kitchens and farms eight donated fields, in order to feed sick clients and their family members. Most of the volunteers have been with TKMOAMS for six years or more, and more than half are grandmothers usually with orphans in their own homes in addition to those they visit in the community.  Almost all the volunteers are women. To assist these remarkable volunteers, SLF helps TKMOAMS provide volunteer training, incentives, and a “Savings Club” project that encourages volunteers to save and sustain themselves over an extended period of time. The SLF also provides emergency assistance for clients, ensures that some of the area’s neediest orphans can participate in psychosocial support activities and/or an after-school programme, funds several staff positions, and helps pay for some administrative costs.

• Project descriptions last updated April 2011