World Vision Experience

We recently visited the World Vision A Face of AIDS experience. It was a wonderfully put together exhibit, with pieces from the actual villages where 4 children, all affected, and infected by AIDS, lived. The experience follows these children, in their lives, via a hand held head set, telling you of their village, the constant struggle to survive, the stigma of AIDS, and the losses they have experienced. The young girl we followed lost her father at 5, and started to show the signs of AIDS shortly after. It was heart breaking to hear about how the little girl was shunned, and mocked by her peers, how she did not learn as fast because she was too sick to attend school often. Then one night her mother lay dying, and her uncle came, and took her mother away, leaving her sister and her to fend for themselves. They were kicked out of their house, and spent weeks homeless and hungry, before finding a church that would take them in. In time her mother returned, healthy, and became the first woman in their village to use ARV's, and started to work with World Vision to advocate to these families, and show them the proper use of the meds, and how to care for themselves and slow the spread of HIV.

The story is immersive and captures you with it's poignant pictures of a beautiful, dark eyed little girl, and the toll the disease took on her. Nearly her life, before World Vision came to her village, and with sponsorship from people around the world, saved her family, and how they give back by caring for others that are sick, and teaching about HIV transmission and dispelling long held myths. These women, with World Vision help are working to change an entire community, and with our help they can reach well beyond the borders of their tiny fishing villages, and affect change throughout the word.

Go to www.worldvisionexperience.org to find out if the exhibit is coming near you soon, and seriously think about sponsoring a child, caring for them and helping them to grow to fulfill their God given potential, who knows what they can become!!!