Keep a Child Alive

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 go to school, but school fees were beyond reach for this struggling family. Shortly after her mother’s death, Rani’s health began to deteriorate. She developed fevers and long periods of weakness.  When her grandmother finally took her to a local hospital, she learned she was HIV-positive, and feared that she was destined to die just as her parents had.

As so often happens with HIV-positive orphans who are cared for by aging grandparents, the cost for essential medical care was more than they could afford. Rani is luckier than most children in her circumstances. She found a new home at the Living India Home of Hope in June 2008.  Supported by KCA, 60 HIV-positive children live in peace here, where they eat well-balanced meals, go to school for the first time and experience the once seeming impossibility of childhood.

Rani was 13 when she came to Living Hope, and had never seen the inside of a classroom. With a school right on the premises, children who need extra attention can get the support they need. As a teenager, sitting in a classroom filled with 5-year-old students at a public school would have been humiliating for Rani, who has already faced the worst that life delivers.

Today, Rani is a veracious reader, an eager student and leader among the other children who live in the Living India Home of Hope. She is also a constant on the swing set during school breaks!

Your support for Keep a Child Alive makes it possible for Living India to continue providing the highest quality of care to children like Rani, once abandoned to horrifying circumstances because of HIV and AIDS. Help KCA help Living India and donate now.