HIV/ AIDS is the world’s most serious public health threat. Since the start of the epidemic 60 million people have been infected and over 20 million have died. One of the most devastating consequences of this is massive increase in the number of orphans societies have to care for.

Uganda is facing the challenge of caring for an orphan population of 2 million children, set to rise to 3.5 million by the year 2010. It is easy to look a at situations like this with despair and detachment but together we will bring hope and help to the millions facing the loss of their parents.

Orphans Know More is a relationally based charity working to bring global communities and people closer together. We operate as a ministry of the international charity Youth With A Mission (Registered charity No. 264078).

Orphans Know More believe that the best way to tackle the growing international orphan crisis is to follow the biblical principle of placing the lonely into families. Sam Kisolo, the director of Youth With A Mission Uganda, has taken 11 orphans into his family (along with his 4 biological children) and cares for countless others in the wider community. When asked why he feels that adoption, rather than opening more orphanages is of such importance he replied, “Placing children in families gives then the right to be children again, they no longer have to live with the stigma of being an HIV/ AIDS orphan, but become a child again as a part of a family.”

Jinja in Southern Uganda is the site of Orphans Know More pilot project. It is there that around 30 local families have taken 150 Orphans in as their own, offering love, acceptance and care to these children without condition. These families of up to 15 children still function as a nuclear unit free from institutionalisation, inspiring hope in us all that this model can be replicated on a larger scale.

Orphans Know More have set out to:

• Increase the standard of living for these families
• Ensure that all children are able to attend school, have appropriate nutritional intake, and live in adequate housing
• Guarantee that all children who are unwell with HIV/ AIDS or other ailments are receiving the treatment they require
• Give 100% of money raised directly into these areas as well as funding a local social worker to assess the needs of the children and the care they are receiving

It is our hope that people in the UK will become linked to communities across the world, taking on their needs as if they were our local neighbours. We are gifted with the means to act on our compassion.

Let Orphans Know More help you get involved.

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