January 2012
2 posts
A survey released yesterday found that South... →
More than 1000 families fed for an entire month.
What a beautiful way to start off 2012! With your generosity and support, Keep a Child Alive can feed more than 1000 families at Alive Medical Services in Uganda for an entire month. We are forever grateful to provide nutrition to those on AIDS medication to ensure successful treatment. THANK YOU!
Dr. Pasquine Ogunsanya, the Medical Director of Alive Medical Services has shared a message with us...
December 2011
4 posts
A Miracle of what Nutrition can do for a poor HIV...
We have been meeting patients from Alive Medical Services, Uganda, these past few weeks to introduce to our KCA supporters who they are helping to feed with our Feed a Family campaign.
Supported by our treatment and nutrition programs, we’d love for you to meet Nanteza Maimuna and her 2 children Sseera Fatuma, 6 years old and Sowali Musisis, 4 years old.
Maimuna lost her husband to HIV and...
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Janet and daughter Lucy at Alive Medical Services
Meet Janet, 36 years old and her daughter, Lucy who is 12 months old, both on AIDS treatment and receive the nutritional program at Alive Medical Services.
They are both newly diagnosed with HIV and mother Janet was referred to Alive Medical Services on the 14th September 2011 and is now in care. Janet, a peasant from the eastern part of Uganda, is a 4 hour drive from Kampala where Alive...
Meet Teddy who is ALIVE because of AMS in Uganda
Teddy is a 65 year old widow who lives in the neighboring slums a few meters away from Alive Medical Services (AMS) in Kampala, Uganda. She came to AMS in 2008 with full blown AIDS and is currently under comprehensive HIV and AIDS treatment and care.
Our nutrition program provides Teddy, one of many grandmothers, food for her and her 11 orphaned grandchildren. Not only is Teddy a widow at 65,...
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Julie's INSPIRE Paintings to benefit Keep a Child...
Julie Weaverling, chose to support Keep a Child Alive’s work through her creative passion. Julie creates contemporary paintings and mixed media pieces using encaustic, oil & wax and acrylic paint as well as Joomchi, a Korean art form. Beginning with a thought or idea, the artist’s inspirations are endless. Generally abstract, Julie’s work includes 2D works and...
September 2011
2 posts
Rani Learns to Read
Rani was born into peril to a poor rural family torn apart by HIV/AIDS at a time when the virus was beginning to show its face in rural India. Her father died of AIDS in 2005, and her mother died a year later, after years of illness and decline. Rani was sent to live with her aging grandmother, where she soon began working as a day laborer, at age 11, to help support the household. Rani yearned to...
Jay Sean Visits Sahara
On August 19, Jay Sean visited the Sahara Aalhad Care Home to see the beauty of Keep a Child Alive’s work on the ground in India. To date, KCA has helped Sahara provide nearly 2,000 people with comprehensive HIV/AIDS care services, including access to treatment, food, counseling, and residential care. Sahara was started more than thirty years ago to help people struggling with substance abuse, and...
July 2011
1 post
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Where in Brooklyn is Keep a Child Alive?
Summertime in BK just might be our favorite season! It’s full of lazy afternoon rooftop gatherings, scenic walks across the Brooklyn Bridge, community gardening, outdoor concerts, and of course our beloved street fairs and fleas! Together, with our amazing community supporters, Keep a Child Alive has been out and about around our Brooklyn ‘hood.
Have you seen us yet this summer?
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June 2011
4 posts
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AIDS Activists at Grand Saline High School!
KCA would like to extend an immense thank you to the students of Ms. Crone’s 1st period World Geography class at Grand Saline High School of Grand Saline, Texas! After learning about the devastating AIDS pandemic in their class, the students became determined to make a positive impact in the lives of those who suffer from this terrible disease, knowing very well that these were people they would...
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Alicia Keys: In Women's Words at the UN
Watch Alicia’s Speech at 1:18:00
Watch the video on the UN Women site here: http://www.unwomen.org/calendar-of-events/?event_id=17#webcast
The women of the world know what to do. And they do it. They would do more if they had equal rights and weren’t discriminated against. That is what we need to fix more than anything in our world. With my organization, Keep a Child Alive, we...
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Welcome Nichole Rhodes to our Board of Directors.
As Founder and Manager of The Rhodes Global Group, Nichole has created a dynamic international consultancy focused on understanding, building and promoting competitive identities for nations, multinational companies and NGO’s. Her consulting firm works closely with its clientele to develop strategic business alliances and partnerships, develop and implement strategies for revenue growth and create...
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Remembering Nkosi Johnson
June 1, 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Nkosi Johnson, a young activist and hero in the AIDS movement. Born HIV positive, Nkosi first made international headlines when he was 8 years old and his foster mother, Gail Johnson, tried to enroll him at a local school. With no policies in place around the admission of HIV+ children into schools at that time, a battle ensued that...
May 2011
37 posts
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Day 31 - Faith Renewed
The 17 years since the genocide in Rwanda have been a time of intense rebuilding for the country and its people. Improvements in the health, education and economic sectors have enhanced the quality of life for many in Rwanda, whose capital city of Kigali bustles with activity. But despite progress, the legacy of those 100 days continues to cast a shadow on the survivors, many of who still suffer...
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Day 30 - Sifiso: A Father with a Future
The statistics associated with HIV in the world today are unbelievable – 33 million people infected with the virus, 30 million people dead and 16 million orphaned. But when you meet just one of those 33 million infected, you are changed because it’s no longer a statistic but a person and their life. KCA’s Louise O’Shea shares her daily inspiration with us:
I first heard Sifiso’s story...
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Day 29 - Lisimba: No Love at Home, No Place to Go
The staff at our Family Care Clinic (FCC) in Mombasa, Kenya, first met Lisimba* in June 2006 when she was just 14 years old. Her mother was HIV-positive, so they agreed that Lisimba should be tested as well. When Lisimba’s test results confirmed she was positive for HIV, she went through intensive counseling and then started on ARVs. Lisimba responded positively to the HIV treatment and the...
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Day 28 - ARVs + Food = Life
Meet Kwagala at Alive Medical Services, who’s name fittingly means “love.” As one of 30 dedicated staff members at the 24-hour clinic in Uganda, she takes loving care of the clinic and heads the group of women who pack the food for Nutrition Day every month. The Nutrition program at Alive provides monthly food parcels to more than 1,000 of the clinic’s poorest patients, whose families would...
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Day 27 - Santosh: Getting Stronger Every Day
Just under a year ago, three-year-old Santosh came to the Living India Home of Hope in Chandrakal. He was frail, under-nourished and severely under-weight. His physical and emotional health was poor, with a low T-cell count and a pure disinterest in engaging with the other children in the home. He would walk around with his head held down, shuffling his feet. Santosh is like many HIV+ children...
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Day 26 - Sandile: The First of Thousands
Sandile has been a part of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry since the beginning. Founded by Mum Carol Dyantyi in 2002, Ikageng today provides the basic necessities for more than 1500 children living in child-headed households in Soweto, South Africa - including food, clothing, water, electricity, school fees, healthcare and transport. When Sandile was only 14 years old, he lost both his parents to...
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Day 25 - Pasha: Finding Unconditional Love
When Pasha was only four years old, his father, an abusive alcoholic, died of AIDS. After his death, Pasha and his mother were living with his uncle when she tested positive for HIV. When her status was revealed to the family, Pasha’s mother was confined to a single room in the neighborhood in an attempt to keep her illness “contained.” It was during this time that Pasha also fell ill and...
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Day 24 - Mikayla: Smiling for the First Time
Keep a Child Alive and Operation Bobbi Bear are both run by warrior women who believe in every child’s right to life, love and care. Operating in Durban, South Africa, Bobbi Bear is a unique organization that rescues, heals and fights for sick and vulnerable children in South Africa. Bobbi Bear gives a voice to the thousands of children it serves, many who have been silenced at the hands of...
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Day 23 - Aanchal: A Home to Call Their Own
The spirit of the RNP+ Aanchal Care Home in Jalore is one of love. Located in rural Jalore, the orphan care home was established by the Rajasthan Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (RNP+) to provide a safe haven for the most vulnerable children in the community. Many of these children have lost their parents to AIDS, and their remaining family members are too poor or unwilling to care for...
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Day 22 - Mubarak: A Leader for His Peers
At the Centreville Clinic in Rwanda, one of the many support programs offered is the peer-parent group. These groups are essential to our patients because they offer young, HIV-positive children the mentorship and guidance they need from the older “peer” patients. They can share their stories with one another and be a shoulder to lean on, learning from each other that they are not alone in their...
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Day 21 - Roja : Big Sister to All
The plight of AIDS orphans in India is one of immeasurable complexities that destines children to die with the virus left unchecked and untreated. The debilitating stigma that continues to surround HIV in India renders children orphaned by AIDS to be forcefully driven from their villages and left to fend for themselves. In the rural village of Chandrakal, located three hours outside of Hyderabad,...
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Day 20 - Bashir : His Transformation Continues
A few weeks ago, KCA traveled from Kampala to Jinja to visit our beloved Bashir. We picked him up at a roadside vegetable stand alive with shoppers, boda-boda drivers and women balancing baskets piled high with vegetables on their heads while children scurried at their feet. Even in the crowded marketplace, it was easy to spot Bashir: Tall and still slight in build, his million-watt smile lights...
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Day 19: Mary & Anna - Home at Last
The high instances of child rape in South Africa are devastating. It takes a special group of people to respond to this reality. In Durban, Operation Bobbi Bear works on behalf of South Africa’s child victims of sexual abuse to help minimize their risk of HIV-infection, ensure their health and well-being in places of safety and bring their perpetrators to justice. Three years ago, Bobbi Bear was...
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Day 18 - Tendai Shishange : A Sister's Sacrifice
Before AIDS, there was no word for orphan in Africa. Now, there are more than 16 million worldwide. We live in a world where 16.6 million children have been orphaned by AIDS, 15 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Keep a Child Alive, founded as an urgent response to access AIDS treatment to the poor, increasingly finds itself responding to the epidemic of orphaned and vulnerable children whose...
Keep a Child Alive ranks 4th at AIDS Walk NY in...
The early morning rainstorm in NYC didn’t halt the Keep a Child Alive AIDS Walk team this Sunday, May 15th 2011. Our team, with over 188 virtual members, had a great turnout of 50+ walkers who braved the weather to show support for the fight against HIV/AIDS! Wearing BUY LIFE inspired t-shirts, designed specifically for the walk by New England School of Design student Saige, together we walked...
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Day 17 - Savitri : A Life Rebuilt
Keep a Child Alive seeks to empower and enrich our patient’s lives as a whole, hence our motto of “life beyond the pill.” Many of our patients seek more than relief from their illness, but a chance to begin their life anew and leave the devastation of their past behind them. Such is the case of one of Sahara Aalhad Care Home’s many success stories: Savitri. At 14-years-old, Savitri was forced to...
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Day 16 - Patra : Abandoned at Birth
Meet Patra: A beautiful baby girl from Kampala, Uganda. When Patra was born, she was abandoned and left outside of a local hospital. Severely malnourished and suffering from a fungal infection, she was brought to Alive Medical Services in December of 2010, when she was just eight months old. Weighing barely ten pounds and visibly sick, Patra’s condition was extremely dire. She tested positive for...
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Day 15 - Afaafa : A Baby with a New Beginning
Little Afaafa is the youngest child in his family of five. His father passed away due to an HIV-related illness, leaving Afaafa and his siblings in the sole care of their mother. Afaafa’s mother is a day laborer with no family to turn to for help as she struggles to care for her children through extreme poverty. As if these hardships were not enough, 11-month-old Afaafa fell sick with symptoms of...
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Day 14 - Moses: A Child's Spirit Broken
Moses was always the first to jump in front of the camera. He loved to have his photo taken, and to look at his image grinning back at him a few seconds later from the little screen on the digital camera. Just 11 years old when he came to Alive Medical Services, Moses had been surrounded by the sickness and suffering of AIDS for as long as he could remember. His own father, and then his mother,...
Treatment = Prevention
Today an exciting and ground breaking announcement that will turn the tide of HIV/AIDS was made from a recent study’s findings on treatment as prevention. Results from this study showed that those partners infected with HIV, on anti-retroviral treatment, reduced the risk of transmitting HIV to their uninfected partner by 96%. The implications of these results prove the need for universal...
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Day 13 - Sparrow: A Little Bird Gets Her Wings
Two years ago, Sparrow was found living in a tin shack, abandoned by her mother, fending for herself and trying to keep her baby sibling alive. She was a little girl, just four years old, when she was brought to Nkosi’s Haven severely malnourished, dehydrated and weighing only 11 pounds. The baby left in her care died just a little while after. Located in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nkosi’s...
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Day 12 - Bobbi Bear: Protecting the Most...
Meet some of the warrior women working for Operation Bobbi Bear. In the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, one in every four girls faces the prospect of being raped by her sixteenth birthday. Operation Bobbi Bear works on behalf of South Africa’s child victims of sexual abuse helping to minimize their risk of HIV-infection at point of rescue, ensuring their health and well-being in places of safety and...
Alicia Keys and Stephen Lewis Come Together for...
Alicia Keys, co-founder of Keep a Child Alive (KCA), performed at Hope Rising! on May 3rd to raise awareness and funds for the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Keep a Child Alive and the Stephen Lewis Foundation are like minded AIDS organizations, funding community based organizations run by extraordinary people on the ground who have risen to the challenge of HIV/AIDS in their community. Much ...
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The Happiest Hour.
By Alexis Tirado, Head Blogger for IAAS.com A few weeks ago, my team mate Vanessa, encouraged our staff to raise money for Keep a Child Alive. Why KCA? Well, Vanessa and I work for AK-Worldwide, Alicia Keys’ company. Alicia is the co-founder of KCA. The more I work with Alicia, the more I realize that there’s an urgent need to help children and families affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India....
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Day 11- Noah: Three Years Later
In 2008, Leigh Blake, Founder & President of Keep a Child Alive traveled to Kigali, Rwanda to the Icyuzuzo Clinic (now the Centreville Clinic) supported by KCA. There she met Noah, a young teenage boy with a dream to perform his music for the world. KCA made this dream come true when Noah joined KCA Co-Founder Alicia Keys on American Idol for a life-changing performance. He returned to...
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Day 10 - Dheeraj: Learning to Be Loved
Dheeraj is a smart young boy of 12 years. Four years ago, his father died of AIDS. His mother, also HIV+, deserted Dheeraj after his father’s death, leaving him to live with his uncle. His uncle took him to be tested for HIV, and he started taking ARV medication after he tested positive. Without loving care and support in his uncle’s home, Dheeraj ran away and struggled to survive on his own. ...
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Day 9 - Ikageng: When Children Raise Themselves
Imagine being a mother to over 1500 children, meet Mum Carol Dyanti of Soweto, South Africa. She has created a new model for family for orphans living in child-headed households in Soweto, South Africa. These children have experienced first-hand the true devastation of losing their parents and guardians to AIDS. Siblings continue to live together in their homes and Ikageng provides for all the...
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Day 8 - Mother's Day - Blue Roof: Babies Born...
Worldwide, only half of all pregnant women living with HIV have access to the medicine they need to protect their unborn children. And two-thirds of children born HIV+ do not have access to the medicine they need to stay alive. In Africa alone, 1,000 babies were born with HIV today. Only half of them will live to see the age of 2. Located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal where the prevalence of...
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Day 7 - Nkosi Johnson: A Hero's Dream Lives On
Keep a Child Alive is constantly inspired by the stories of resilience and strength that we hear from the children and families at our sites. One of the many children we have been moved by is a South African boy named Nkosi Johnson, who was not cared for by our work, but was a true AIDS activist and hero for the AIDS movement. Born HIV positive in 1989, Nkosi Johnson (born, Xolani Nkosi) was...
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The Naked Adventurer....for KCA.
One Naked Man – One boat – 6000KM
Showing what one man has decided to do for charity to help others, Keith Whelan to begin his epic row across the Indian Ocean this Saturday
Who: Keith Whelan
What: Solo row across the Indian Ocean
When: Departing Saturday 7th May
Where: Geraldton, Western coast of Australia
How: Naked…and in a boat!
Kildare...
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Day 6 - Meet Nicol: Blue Roof Wellness Centre
Nicol grew up in Durban, South Africa, where she was first introduced to HIV nine years ago, when her aunt revealed her HIV positive status to her family. Nicol’s aunt was very sick when she finally disclosed her status, and she died shortly after. Nicol then began noticing similar symptoms in her older brother. He was incredibly weak when she finally convinced him to take an HIV test. He tested...
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Day 5 - The Beginning: Why We Do What We Do
See all of our Daily Inspirations.
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Day 4 - Sridevi: A Picture of Poverty
Keep a Child Alive began supporting the work of Sahara Aalhad in Pune, India last year, and we are proud to have already provided treatment, care and support for 560 patients and their families! When KCA President Leigh Blake visited Sahara in December 2010, the Executive Director, Elizabeth Selhore, took Leigh and her team into a nearby slum where they met Sridevi and her family. Sridevi is 21...
Our New Board Members
Ellen Healy An accomplished executive with twenty-five years of integrated marketing experience across advertising, promotion, public relations, brand and event marketing, product innovation, with an expertise in talent/sports/entertainment sponsorship integration. Ellen has held numerous PepsiCo US and International marketing positions. Projects that have been her legacy at PepsiCo include...
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Day 3 - The Rajpurohit Children: Keeping Siblings...
There is something special about being able to care for entire families, in addition to individual adults and children. Keep a Child Alive is proudly able to care for a group of siblings who need assistance at our sites in Africa and India. Today, we introduce you to three siblings that are currently being cared for at RNP+ (Rajasthan Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS) in India. Brother and...
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Day 2 - Angel: A Precious Life Lost
Keep a Child Alive never shies away from even the most difficult stories. And over the years, our work has born witness to stories of unfathomable human tragedy that play out every day in Africa. Perhaps the most painful story of all though, the horror of child rape in South Africa, still remains to be told. It is a story so outrageous in its depravity that it boggles the mind, yet it occurs at...
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Day 1 - Fiona: Orphaned by War and AIDS
Every patient who walks through our doors at Alive Medical Services is a miracle just waiting to happen. They touch our hearts when they arrive, broken and fearful of the death they are sure awaits them, and then they become our inspiration as we champion their transformation on ARVs. Each is an amazing gift made possible through the pure love of KCA and it donors, who give life to thousands...