World Aids Day

Tomorrow, 1 December, it’s World AIDS Day. For many of the families we work with in Africa, the daily challenges of food security are compounded by the ever present threat of AIDS. In Lesotho, Western Kenya and Rwanda in particular, adults who would normally be working, bringing up children and caring for the elderly are too ill to carry on.

It’s a simple fact, but for anti –retroviral medication to work, people need to be well nourished. Our agricultural training helps poor farmers get the best from their soil so that they can grow vegetables all year round, thereby adding much needed nutrients to their diet. Farmers like those in the Ihuriro group in Rwanda, benefit from eating fresh vegetables each day and also from the income that the surplus produce provides; many use the money to pay for transport to local clinics to get their anti-retroviral medication –literally a life saver.

Because some evidence shows that milk from goats, rather than cows helps to absorb anti-retroviral medication better, we provide dairy goats to families. In addition to the health benefits, a pair of goats is much easier to manage than a cow.

Goat’s milk provides essential nourishment and an income too. Jennifer Achieng from Western Kenya is HIV positive. Her husband and several other relatives have died from AIDS. She has three children to care for, as well as her orphaned niece. Thanks to Send a Cow, Jennifer received a dairy goat and has learnt organic farming techniques:

“The milk from the goat gives me strength. Now I can work to get food, and it improves the immune system. I also give some milk to my mother in-law and sell some…Without Send a Cow I don’t think I’d be alive now”.

In Rwanda, many of the groups we work with comprise solely HIV positive women who were raped during the atrocities –a tragic legacy. Unsurprisingly, in these areas, we place an increased emphasis on our social development work to help fractured communities come together to face a brighter future.

Find out more about our life transforming work and visit our gift shop to see how you could buy a goat to help farmers like Jennifer.