Sr. Elizabeth Mooney
Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary
Zambia
Zambia
is a landlocked country with a population of
10.9 million and has a national HIV/AIDS
positive rate of 16%. Ndola city has a HIV
positive rate of 26.7%. It is against this
backdrop that my core work with our community
programmes operates from Chinika House with a
special emphasis on the prevention of HIV/AIDS
and other communicable diseases and developing
strategies to mitigate the effects of the
pandemic in the community.
During the past year my work has been
wide-ranging, providing people in the community,
with life skills, through counselling,
dissemination of correct information on
HIV/AIDS, workshops on Good Child Care Practice,
empowering pupils and teachers in local schools
with correct factual information on HIV/AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. Eighty households have
improved household food security by being
supported to grow their own crops and were
taught correct farming techniques, 146 children
attended literacy classes; many attained a high
level of competency and were able to be
integrated in to the Government schools.
Enabling community members to facilitate
community activities is a conducive way of
identifying felt needs.
We want a society, where children will enjoy a
good diet, can access good quality education and
health care, a society where women are allowed
to function both in the home and in the
community as equals with their male partners,
secure in the knowledge that their local leaders
have their interest at heart. Only then will we
have a favourable environment for community
development to emerge and flourish. This may
seem like an unattainable ideal today, but faint
flickers of hope are there which convinces me,
that the impossible of today can become the
reality of tomorrow, even if tomorrow is a few
years down the road.
So it is vital that both the health education
and capacity building activities must continue
to bring this painful chapter of HIV/AIDS
epidemic to a gentle close.