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Nigeria Mission Provides Education and Support to AIDS Orphans
FrontLines - February 2009
By Ebun Aleshinloye
Children can enroll in math, literacy, English, and other classes at the Acada learning center in Okpella, Edo State, in Nigeria.
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Abuja, Nigeria—Agnes Oreye, a 43-year-old widow who lives in Agenebode, Edo State, cares for her four children as well as two other children who lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. She is able to feed her extended family from the rice, cowpeas, and other products USAID provides her to sell.
The USAID mission has been helping families like Oreye’s care for orphans and vulnerable children
by providing them business education, equipment and, as in this case, materials she can sell.
USAID has spent nearly $68 million here over the last four years on a menu of programs aimed at shoring up the lives of children affected by HIV/AIDS and the people who care for them. The funding, primarily from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has helped the mission, other U.S. government agencies, and Nigerian government workers support nearly 67,000 orphans and vulnerable children in 20 out of 36 states in the country. The program in which Oreye participates supports 5,470 vulnerable
children and 937 caregivers
in 11 states.
With the largest population in Africa, Nigeria is home to an estimated 1.2 million children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable to HIV infection
as a result of having lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. And those numbers are expected to grow in the coming years despite advances in care and treatment.
While losing a parent to AIDS is traumatic by itself, children who are left behind endure stress, face withdrawal from school, and risk social stigma from their communities because of the disease that killed their parent. Some of the children are also at increased risk for malnutrition and sexual exploitation.
As parents become HIV infected and ill, the family savings
is spent on care. As a result, household capacity to provide for children’s basic needs declines and an increasing number
of children are being forced to take up the daunting responsibilities
of supporting the family.
Another program, this one a few miles from Agenebode in Okpella, is an Acada learning center. It is one of 11 funded by USAID designed to provide math, literacy, and life skills to more than 2,100 Nigerian children
who are not able to attend school because of HIV/AIDS. The children are taught for three hours in the afternoon five days a week, and are provided with books, writing materials, uniforms, sandals, and school bags for the 10 months they spend there.
Once they complete the Acada program, the students are integrated back into the formal school system.
The centers receive additional
support from traditional rulers and their local communities. Alhaji Tafida Abubakar Ila, the emir of Rano in Kano state, mobilized the local elite to support
75 orphans and vulnerable children at the Acada learning center in the town. The wealthy patrons pay the salaries of the teachers and provide school materials and food for the students.
Umah Support Group, a local USAID partner, was instrumental in gaining the emir’s support.
USAID’s Nigeria mission is also involved in reducing the stigma and discrimination children
affected by HIV/AIDS often face. For out-of-school youth, the mission also provides preventive education and skills so they can learn how to protect themselves from HIV infection.
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