FCF Project Partner Namenyi Project Hope has been supporting the AIDS orphanage sector for a number of years. Among other programs, it hosts AIDS Awareness seminars with primary and senior school students in rural areas, educating them on the dangers of this deadly virus and how to prevent it at all costs.

In addition to education, there is little debate as to the integral part that nutrition plays in HIV prevention, treatment and mitigation.

Namenyi Project Hope undertakes feeding programs in schools, orphanages and clinics where a high percentage of the children are impacted by AIDS, delivering healthy food (fruit, vegetables, meat, and bread) on a regular basis.

In one township school where Namenyi Project Hope works, out of 320 students only 30 are being raised by both parents. So more than 90% of the students represented have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS and are being brought up by grandmothers or relatives.

Due to their extreme poverty, many of these children arrive at school with empty stomachs, so even providing a low-cost, balanced meal of two bananas, cereal and milk can do wonders, both physically and academically.

Namenyi Project Hope research indicates that after only 3 months of this sort of enhanced diet, the grades of well over 80% of the children improved dramatically, not to speak of their school attendance. This is attributed to the simple fact that with some food in their stomachs they can actually concentrate on what the teacher is teaching, rather than the emptiness in their mid-sections. (Yet another benefit is that many anti-retro viral drugs they take to maintain their health need to be taken with food in the stomach.)

Total cost of program: $15,000 to feed a school of 320 students for a full school year.