Children of God Relief Fund/Nyumbani

Nyumbani in Kenya provides hospice, orphanage and community outreach services to HIV-infected children. Newly added in 2005, Nyumbani Village is a self-sustaining community to assist AIDS-affected seniors and children.

Why do we exist?

Nyumbani is an active response to the rising number of HIV-infected children born in Africa each year. Because infants carry many of their mothers’ antibodies through the first year of life, a number of newborns with infected mothers may give a “false positive” and never actually develop the virus themselves. In fact, a full 75% of babies who test positive at birth will eventually be found not to carry the virus. But tragically for these children, they are often abandoned at birth, or shortly thereafter, ostracized from traditional orphanages and social services because of their HIV status and the mistaken assumption that they are certain to develop and eventually succumb to AIDS.

Nyumbani represents an effort to remedy this situation. At Nyumbani, whose very name means “home” in Swahili, abandoned children are given the best nutritional, medical, psychosocial and spiritual care possible so that they can and do survive until the time when an accurate HIV status can be determined. Those children who convert to negative are adopted or transferred to appropriate settings. Those children who remain positive live at Nyumbani for the rest of the days that will be theirs.

What have you accomplished?

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