Another was to look for ways to curb unemployment. They say boredom and inactivity contribute to promiscuity, so they want to build a center where youth can gather for socializing, for learning, and where they can be taught a skill. They formed a drama group to present common scenarios to their peers so that they can then strategize how to prevent AIDS with those peers in those situations.
The PCC has 15 secondary schools (high schools), which are boarding schools. In each of the schools they have formed an HIV/AIDS club where the youth strategize what they want to do to prevent AIDS in that school. They too develop their own dramas. They write their own songs, they create their own literature and events, all to reach out to the immediate peers they live, study and socialize with.
“Disempowerment and conditions of weakness, like poverty and gender inequality, [make] women particularly vulnerable to AIDS,” says the WCC article. Statistics show that almost half of those 14,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS each day are women. Nearly 60 percent of all those infected with AIDS in Africa are women. Poverty makes these women vulnerable because the survival of the family becomes the goal of each woman. In many parts of the DRC people eat once every other day. That is their routine. So when you try to engage women to prevent AIDS, they say, “First help me feed my family; first help me send my children to school.” Giving women a legitimate way to earn an income provides women an alternative to engaging in risky sexual practices to earn money. The CPC has helped widows in one area to form an informal credit association. These widows come together each month and give a specific amount (around a dollar) to create a pot of money. One widow takes that entire amount and invests the money in a business she chooses. The next month a second widow takes the pot, and so on. “We can all eat every day now,”,they say. They also know they can make a difference in their own lives as they work together. See Transformation for Health in the Democratic Republic.
There are many more things that our partners are doing. They are on the cutting edge of making a difference in terms of HIV/AIDS. When you read or hear about how this disease is devastating Africa, know that Presbyterians are responding. They are in the middle of the lives of people who are greatly affected, bringing healing and hope by being the hands and feet and voice of Jesus Christ. Rejoice with them for the steps that they have made and join with them in taking steps now and in the future. |
