Youth Leading Youth To Improve Lives

Currently, MMS offers a monthly support programme for over 100 children living with HIV in Ang’iya, Homa Bay County, where 10% of Kenya’s HIV positive children live - mainly full or partial orphans.  Through these sessions, MMS’ healthcare team observed that the children were not being given opportunities to play and interact with their peers due to fear and stigmatisation in the community; invisible barriers were keeping the two groups apart.

Thanks to a small grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Fund for Sisters, Sister Rosemary Adhiambo was busy until June 2022, implementing a one-year programme of activity designed to reduce segregation, discrimination and isolation for children living with HIV.  Through what have become known locally as ‘youth camps’, bridges have been built between those children living with HIV in around Ang’iya and their peers. All of the children look forward with great excitement to spending three days with each other. At the gatherings, together they have explored common health challenges related to leading a healthy life.  Some of the camp beneficiaries shared their experience of living with a virus with their peers and during the pandemic, together, the children took their campaign into local villages, determined to pass on their messages about leading a healthy life.

Wearing project T-shirts saying ‘Youth Leading Youth to Improve Lives’ and carrying their campaign banners, ‘Say no to drugs, alcohol and smoking!’, the children made a noticeable impact in local villages. Here, the activities have made a start in transforming negative attitudes towards this group of marginalised children into greater acceptance, welcome and valuing of them. The ‘new normal’ created by the pandemic, where everyone faces the possibility of living with a virus, has been used through the camps to shift stereotypes about what children living with HIV can and can’t do into something more positive, creative, responsible.  After all, we all face health challenges because of COVID-19. In this respect, the project has also led by example through its risk prevention, whether handwashing or masks, which increased feelings of security. When social distancing became a challenge, the first camp was organised in two halves to keep numbers low.

Sister Rosemary recalls how the sub-county public health officer, who had given a talk to the children, told her that he was most impressed by their lively interaction. She speaks of the camp activities as helping local communities to view the world through a more inclusive mindset.  Two villagers said they had never seen the likes of this before - meaning that they embraced the activities. As a result of discussing the health risks of drugs, alcohol and smoking, one young man told us that he used to drink locally brewed alcohol heavily, but has since stopped and gone back to school. One girl living with HIV used to be afraid of her how others viewed her and suffered from low self-esteem, but now, thanks to our gatherings, she feels free to be herself again, dresses with style and walks around confidently. We hope that she will become a role model for others in the community, who see her transformation because she now views life in general and herself more positively. 

However, Sister Rosemary considers that the greatest accomplishment of all was an increase in the participant numbers at camps, as word spread about them. Camp beneficiaries, whether living with HIV or not, looked forward to spending time together, telling their stories and making new friends. She describes how health education, sports as well as planning a health campaign broke down existing barriers of fear until everyone bonded and felt safe with the camp organisers and each other.

Indeed, the camps are now being viewed as a new and valued way for the Society to express its ‘healing presence’ in Kenya - helping MMS in Ang’iya to live up to its commitment of “pushing beyond those boundaries which separate and divide.”  Sister Rosemary says, “I can’t wait to organise more gatherings on other themes. The children are clamouring to know when the next camp will be and I am now busy, working alongside the Society Fundraiser, to attract further funding. The older children would like to learn to go digital with their future campaigns.”