Chicken Businesses for AIDS Orphans

While we didn't reach our monetary goal, we did raise money enough to provide chickens for three families.  I visited one of the families yesterday:

She sits with the peeps all around her.  She can’t walk because she was born without the bottom part of her legs, but she made her way to us on her knees and sat down to chat.  I squat on the floor next to her and ask her about the four orphans she is raising and her sister, who is helping her with the kids and the household. Her sister is in the hospital, I am told, and three of the children are all in school.  She is so happy to tell me that the children are in school because just a year ago, they weren’t able to afford it.   The youngest sits next to her and smiles shyly when I ask if he’s excited to start school next year.

She points at the chicks and farther from where we sit, at the full grown chickens who cluck around the barren dirt that surrounds the family hut.  They are looking for worms and corn kernels and she looks at them with joy.  She has dreams, you see.  She is going to let the flock get a little bigger and then, she is going to sell some chickens to purchase a goat.  Then, another goat.  And, one day, a cow. Then, she says, the children will be taken care of and she will be ok, too. 

Thank YOU for giving this family hope.  Thank YOU for helping us give them chickens who will one day become goats, who will one day become a cow.  For now, and later, too – they are hope and a future. 

Good stuff!

I am currently in Zimbabwe and just can’t get a good enough connection to upload photos.  I hope I will soon, though.  Meanwhile, know you helped change lives.

If you’d like to know more about our work or how you can become involved, please feel free to write me at tweaver@AFCAids.org.