Help for aids orphans struggling against the odds

Sweet Waters is a South African community dying of AIDS. Currently 196 homes housing in excess of 500 children are parentless and without adult supervision. These orphaned children live in a culture being shredded by AIDS.

Love Is All We Need is a charity committed to diverting what will be a catastrophic outcome for children, communities, a country.

The Hope Centre is a haven that houses children affected by and infected with AIDS and reaches out into the Sweet Waters community taking measures to care for these children.

Presently children in the community are being raped and robbed, living in homes ill-equipped to meet their needs and struggling to survive against insurmountable odds. They are unable to attend school due to lack of funds for fees and uniforms putting their futures in jeopardy.

At present The Hope Centre has set up a mobile mother scheme where 8 local women between them visit 90 homes a day. They earn a box of food and the equivalent of £10 a month. This is a positive step to making a difference.

Sponsor-a-mother is a project being set up to fund the existing mobile mothers and 12 more in the next 2 months. The aim is for these mothers to be earning the equivalent of £70 a month to honour them with a decent wage.

Other immediate projects that Love Is All We Need is taking on for this community include a campaign to have 500 children to start a new school year in January 2008 and to provide each home with a small, safe cooker.

Ultimately we are in the process of working towards building a village inside the community that we believe is a long term solution for restoring hope, love and security.

This describes one community.

THE VISION:

To utilize resources locally from the community eg. People in the community making bricks and being employed to build.

The project is child-led!! Children here funding the project there are leading it in conjunction with the children in the Sweet Waters community eg. The children decide what shape they want their houses to be.

While the village is being built there are skills around building that are being taught. Mark who will oversee the project is an experienced construction worker and has built in Africa before.

A real sense of community is restored inside of hope and possibility for the future.

The homes are safe dispelling childrens fears of what will come in to them from the night under ill fitting doors and through cracks in the walls.