Post Tagged with: "village savings and loan"

From Burden to Blessing

The dawn of the new millennium cast a dark pall over the Southern African nation of Malawi.  The county faced a food crisis that was, in part, fueled by the loss of agricultural workforce due to AIDS-related deaths.  The national HIV prevalence rate was at 16%, and as high as 30% among pregnant women.  With the coming of anti-retroviral medication (ARVs) in 2003, NGOs and systems of government rushed to educate HIV positive people, who had by now organized into peer support groups within their communities.  Essential steps taken by these groups to living positively with the disease included good nutrition, practicing abstinence and safe sex, proper ARV adherence, as well as learning how to give home-based care to bed-ridden HIV positive peers in the community. Ten years later, support group members are not only some of the healthiest-looking people in their communities, they’re also talking to their negative or[…]

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