We all know that it’s not just Oprah and Bono who are working to improve the lives of Africans through improved medical care and education. Millions of Americans have answered the call of Africa’s need.  Have you ever wished for an opportunity to hear firsthand, ask questions and learn about the great need and the many successes of the fight for children against global AIDS?

            On Saturday, December 1, from 4-5 pm you too can participate in a international movement called WORLD AIDS DAY. Project AIDS Orphan is sponsoring A World AIDS Day Walk through the Lowertown Arts District where artists will make space available in and around their galleries for educational, family oriented displays and activities. We want to highlight facts about AIDS and its effects on African children and communities and what people from a West Kentucky community can do to have a positive impact on the lives of people halfway around the globe. The walk will end with a reception and a keynote address from our Kenya Country Director, David Okong’o at Etcetera Coffeehouse, 320 North 6^th Street.

       The event includes a start with warm cookies at the historic Texaco Station corner of 7^th and Madison. Maps will be provided to guide walkers to various locations close by where adults and children can learn about and participate in helping children in need around the world. Visual aids and activities will include: card making station, community handprint walk to symbolize the 6000 children orphaned daily by AIDS, shoe tree exhibit, coin collection jar give-away, opportunities to send a postcards to political leaders, candle lighting in honor of the 300 AIDS orphan we are trying to support, inspiring video presentations and more.

             “This will be the perfect opportunity for families to get that much needed perspective before the holidays. For our family, it’s a chance to focus on the true meaning of the Season-Love in the form of giving” states Paul Bilak, President of the Board. For many families, it’s just a great way to shift from the give-me’s that all parents endure from their kids as the holidays roll around. An added bonus, this event occurs one hour before the local Christmas Parade downtown on Broadway, so folks can get a good parking space, take the Walk in Lowertown, have a hot chocolate and skip on over to the parade.

 Project AIDS Orphan supports children living in Kenya who have lost one or both parents to AIDS by paying for their school fees and providing other support.  We have also been blessed with the opportunity and ability to provide funds for access to clean water, irrigation, farming, antiretroviral drugs and other medications, shoes, treated mosquito nets (to prevent malaria), animals to establish a small farm, clothing, and blankets.  Additionally, we are in the process of building a much needed health clinic Currently the closest one is 45 miles away, a two day walk for most. 

For more information on this project and others like it, visit us on the web at www.projectaidsorphan.org

by Nathan Brown

I have always wanted to be an adventurer. As a young boy, you could find me running around in the forest with my pocket knife, my imagination and a coil of rope through my belt loop, just looking for an excuse to use any of them. Since then I have been lucky enough to take on many adventures. I’ve thrived on traveling,hiking, bicycling, skateboarding, kayaking, rappelling, spelunking and mountaineering. I’ve been a studen, a friend, a coach, an artist, a teammate, a boss, a rock & roller, aboard president, a husband and a father. Nothing prepared me for Kenya.

I suppose on some level I could have imagined how Africa might look, with abject poverty mixed with the occasional giraffe or acacia tree. i must have had some sacharine sense of what to expect. Perhaps a pixilated screen shot of Sally Struthers, or a romantic verse from Hemingway lingered somewhere in my memory, painting an abstract portrait of this dark continent in my mind.

What I discovered was a country full of life among this myriad people of people walking and working…peddling their wares and pedaling their bicycles in a diesel-fumed blur of dust and donkeys. Kenya is alive with women and children selling potatoes by the bucket, young boys tending their goats on the roadside and grown men hawking cell phone cables and roasted corn on a stick to the passing trucks. Families live here. Mothers carry their babies for miles and miles while kids play soccer in the school yards with bare feet and soaring spirits.

I do not pretend to understand the people of Kenya. Rather I WISH to understand them To an outsider, this landscape is bare and bleak, with misery and hardship as far as the eye can see. But I have seen a Kenya steeped in promise and inhope. I have gained a new perspective.