PIETERMARTIZBURG, South Africa – The HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping African nations is destroying entire families – from grandparents to children. One Christian ministry, with the help of Southern Baptists, is making a difference in the lives of thousands of adults and children.
A feeding project conducted by Tabitha Ministries in Pietermartizburg, South Africa, aims to alleviate much of the suffering caused by this deadly disease by providing food and assistance to adults and children who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
Most of Tabitha Ministries’ work is done in the surrounding community of Sweetwaters, where thousands of people are infected with HIV. Tabitha Ministries itself ministers to more than 4,714 children and 1,500 adults in that area. Because so many more people in Sweetwaters are in need, Tabitha Ministries focuses its limited resources on those whose needs are most desperate. A six-month segment of the feeding program used money provided by the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund to help 645 people children and adults with no income at a cost of about 40¢ per day.
Providing food is an important ministry strategy, according to project director Gail Trollip, not only because of the pervasive hunger in Sweetwaters, but also because AIDS patients cannot fight the disease and maintain their anti-retroviral drug treatments unless they are getting a certain level of nutrition.
“Due to the devastation caused from the AIDS pandemic, many adults and children in Sweetwaters are sick and dying from the virus,” Trollip said. “When an adult becomes ill, he is no longer able to provide for himself and has no income. When it is a child, they are unable to care for themselves, as there are no longer adults to provide for them as a result of their deaths from the virus.”
Tabitha Ministries’ community efforts are built around 29 volunteer caregivers who travel Sweetwaters’ streets, checking on patients. Some of those caregivers – called “Mobile Moms” – are women who have been specially trained to work with children, many of whom live in child-headed households because their parents’ lives were claimed by AIDS.
An important aspect of the ministry is that children who are forced into the position of being heads of their household often resort to immoral or illegal ways to provide food and care for their siblings, Trollip said. Providing food relieves some of that pressure so they don’t have to struggle to survive.
In several ways, the project exemplifies the compassion of Christ for people in need, Trollip said.
“This project only responds to those who are the poorest of the poor,” Trollip said. “These are the people who are unable to work due to the fact they are sick. The project allows children to attend school instead of going out to find ways to make money or find food for themselves and their siblings. The project is able to help keep people healthier due to better nutrition and the ability to have food in order to take their ARV’s. This project also responds to the nutritional needs of the HIV-positive caregivers, as well as the 24 AIDS orphans living at Hope Center.”
Tabitha Ministries has been working in the Sweetwaters community for almost 10 years, and each year the ministry grows as the number of those infected with HIV grows, Trollip noted. The volunteer caregivers and Mobile Moms live in the community and bring to light families in need – ones who are infected and dying from the disease and can no longer work or take care of themselves. The provision of food and assistance to these patients is essential to alleviate their suffering and for their survival.
“This ministry is a truly biblical one,” said Susan Hatfield, who with her husband, Mark, directs work in Sub-Saharan Africa for Baptist Global Response. “It helps orphans and widows in their distress, visits people who are sick and helps those who are destitute.”
The fact that Southern Baptists care enough to give to their World Hunger Fund literally makes the difference between life and death for those who receive the aid, Trollip added.
“Our grateful thanks to Southern Baptists for past assistance,” she said. “This has enabled us to serve and share Jesus with the people who are in desperate need, both physically and spiritually in the Sweetwaters Community.”
––– Pamela Swithin is a collegiate correspondent for Baptist Global Response.
In this new video, residents of Kenya’s Rift Valley say ‘Thank you’ for generous gifts to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund that made a life-saving relief effort possible.
To give to the World Hunger Fund, click here. For resources to help you promote World Hunger Sunday Oct. 11, click here.
A key ministry partner has posted this brief video to communicate the urgency of the hunger problem in Kenya and the critical role played by gifts to the Southern Baptist World Hnger Fund. Every dollar given to the WHF is used 100% for on-the-field ministry. World Hunger Sunday is Oct. 11.
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Hunger is a very real problem all through the drought stricken Rift Valley region of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Thanks to the generous gifts of Southern Baptists to the World Hunger Fund, Southern Baptists are able to plan hunger relief projects to help alleviate some of the suffering. God is blessing these efforts. Pray for good rains this next season. Pray for God to strengthen workers in these food distribution efforts. Pray for opportunities to share not only physical food but spiritual food as well.
World Hunger Sunday is just around the corner: Oct. 11. With the burgeoning hunger crisis in Kenya, the need for compassionate giving is great. Will you mobilize your church to help? Resources for observing World Hunger Sunday are available here.
NAKURU, Kenya – Starvation continues to stalk millions of Maasai people in Kenya’s Rift valley, and Southern Baptists are launching a new round of hunger relief to help the neediest survive.
Almost a third of the people in Kenya’s Kajiado and Narok districts are in dire need of food, and the new round of relief efforts will stave off disaster for about 180,000 people, according to the Southern Baptist missionary coordinating the project.
Southern Baptists continue to provide urgently needed assistance to families suffering in Zimbabwe’s unprecedented economic catastrophe. As of December 2008, the inflation rate was estimated at an unfathomable 516 quintillion percent — the highest ever recorded. The only goods available in stores are priced in foreign currency that ordinary citizens do not have. Those who do have some money in the bank are limited to withdrawals too small to purchase food.
A new phase of food distribution was launched in mid-March, sending 45-pound boxes of staple items to 5,000 of Zimbabwe’s neediest families. Each box includes food staples like rice, oil, salt, powdered milk, corned beef, beans, etc., to help families stave off starvation.
This next week, enough food to make 1,800 food parcels should arrive in the country. Please pray for the border crossing and distribution. This will be the last of the approved food parcels that we have set up from the current project. Pray that BGR and partners will have wisdom concerning the next step.
Also, please consider making a contribution toward this project. $90 provides food for a family for one week. For more information visit http://www.gobgr.org and click on the “Giving” tab.
The women danced and sang, thanking God for the food that kept their families alive for a while longer.
The food, delivered by Charlie Daniels, a Southern Baptist missionary in southern Kenya, literally kept these women and their families from starving to death.
As drought ravages the Maasai homeland in Kenya, families face the specter of starvation. Thanks to the generosity of Southern Baptists who gave to their World Hunger Fund, 180,000 Maasai received a full month’s supply of staple foods.
MARALAL, Kenya – While most Americans have never been desperate enough to scrounge for fallen kernels of corn on the dusty ground, famine is a harsh daily reality for millions of people in Kenya. Southern Baptists, through their generous giving to their World Hunger Fund, are providing food relief for thousands of Kenyans on the brink of starvation.
In January 2009, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki declared the food shortage a national disaster. “Our national assessment is that 10 million people are food insecure and require emergency support,” Kibaki said. “These people will not be able to meet their minimum food requirements between now and the end of August 2009 without emergency methods.”
The food crisis was caused in part by severe drought, as well as the global energy crisis and last year’s post-election violence, which disrupted planting in the country’s breadbasket region, Kibaki said.
Charles Daniels, a field partner of Baptist Global Response in Kenya, said conditions in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province are almost unimaginable to Americans.
“In the Samburu district, we have not seen a drop of rain for months. If drought persists, conditions will worsen,” Daniels said. “As grasslands dry up, there is no pasture for livestock. Cows no longer provide milk, which is vital as a source of food and also money to buy other food staples. The water holes where women walk daily have become little more than cracked and dried depressions of dirt.”
With an allocation of $25,000 from the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, desperately needed food staples have been distributed to 4,800 people in Samburu district. Each person received 13 lbs of corn meal, 6.6 lbs of red beans, and .73 lbs of cooking fat.
Those supplies will be enough to sustain the people for a full month, Daniels said. Because Southern Baptists cared enough to give to their World Hunger Fund, people in need have been greatly helped.
“Many Samburu are having a difficult time these days; some more than others,” Daniels said. “While some are still able to walk and wait and survive on a little, others are in real danger. These are the ones we sought out.”
Daniels asked believers to pray for the people of Kenya as they face continued famine and drought – and for the team of Baptist Global Response field partners and national partners who are working hard to give Kenyans an opportunity to experience a full and meaningful life.
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Kate Taylor is a collegiate correspondent of Baptist Global Response. For information on giving to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, please visit our Giving page.
This note in from Ashleigh Campbell, one of our collegiate correspondents at Union University, summarizing what happened through the IDP camp ministries in Kenya earlier this year:
LIMURU, Kenya – Thousands of Kenyans who had to flee their homes because of the election-related violence in December 2007 are now rebuilding their lives after receiving aid from Southern Baptist workers and more than $56,000 from the Southern Baptist world hunger and general relief funds.
After the presidential elections, violence drove many minority tribal groups from their homesteads and those families looked to police camps, churches and Kenyan Red Cross centers for protection. Southern Baptist workers responded to the immediate needs of four such camps, working with the Kenyan Red Cross to provide food, water, medicine, plastic sheeting for shelter, kitchen utensils and blankets over a period of several months.
“Thousands of desperate, fearful and homeless people were coming into the camps with little to no food and only the possessions they could carry with them,” said Mark Hatfield, who with his wife, Susan, directs work in Sub-Saharan Africa for Baptist Global Response. “People were hungry but afraid to leave the camps because of the potential violence outside. Many were traumatized because of what they had personally experienced or heard others had experienced.”
Southern Baptist workers helped connect Kenyan Red Cross personnel with people who could assist with needs in the camps. They also mentored young workers who had never responded to a crisis situation before.
At first, the food provided by Southern Baptists was the only food the camps had. Clean water was delivered in a 1,000-liter tank for drinking and cooking. Plastic sheeting and firewood also were provided. When other relief efforts brought in staple foods, the role of the workers changed to providing storage areas as well as fresh food. Later on, Southern Baptist relief funds were used to have three pit latrines pumped out, greatly improving camp sanitation.
Two of the four camps are now empty, as most people have resettled locally, returned to their original homes or been transported to their tribal homelands. The people remaining were trying to resettle in the area because it is their tribal homeland. The majority of the children still in the area are in school and some of the adults have been able to find jobs in the area.
“Southern Baptists have made many friends because of this outreach. A great many people have experienced God’s love firsthand as Southern Baptists demonstrated the compassion of Jesus Christ for hurting people,” Hatfield said. “We were able to help families avert disaster and find new hope and purpose in life that they can share with others in turn.”
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For information about donating to the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, please visit our Giving page.
Joshua Guthrie was a troubled teen. Like many others of his generation, the 16-year-old high school sophomore was troubled by the needless suffering of so many people in so many places. Hunger and poverty. War-time atrocities and sex trafficking. AIDS orphans and genocides.
Then Joshua read Do Hard Things, a best-selling book by twin brothers Alex and Brett Harris, at 20 years old only barely out of their teens themselves. The book challenges young people to rebel against “the myth of adolescence” – the notion that teens are by nature irresponsible, immature, and rebellious. “By breaking the mold of what society thinks we are capable of, teens can achieve so much more than what’s expected,” the brothers say. “We’ve seen ‘average’ teenagers transformed from channel changers to world changers who are accomplishing incredible things.”
A feeding project conducted by Tabitha Ministries in Pietermartizburg, South Africa, aims to alleviate much of the suffering caused by this deadly disease by providing food and assistance to adults and children who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
