The reason that the website I helped to establish and presently volunteer for (www.mpwn-uganda.org) got started is that the women of the MPWN, who all are on their ARV’s through PEPFAR and other programs, asked for a vehicle through which they could sell their traditional African craft items to help them to provide a sustainable living for their families.

These are women, most of them widowed or single parents, who are living in dire poverty.In Uganda. Like many other places, people are still discriminated against in their societies when their HIV+ status is known and so these women can not normally find employment in their communities.

The thought of my advocacy through ONE for their right to stay alive on ARV’s through PEPFAR and then for them not to be able to support their families (feed their children, pay the school fees to send them to school, etc) was something as a principled person that I could not live with.

So, at their request, we set up the website so that Agnes Nyamayarwo and the HIV+ women that she works with can try to live in economic dignity.

We always welcome visitors to the MPWN website and especially any purchases that people care to make there as the women are getting ready to send their children back to school. The unfortunate fact is that SOME OF THEIR CHILDREN WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ATTEND SCHOOL THIS FALL because their mothers will not be able to afford to send all their children to school !

Thanks to DATA’s leadership’s, there was language in the latest PEPFAR bill which was just recently passed by Congress which will set aside several million dollars for “seed projects” to help people, such as the MPWN, to start self-sufficiency programs like small-scale farming, small businesses and computer training to start helping the people that are being kept alive on ARV’s not to suffer in dire poverty.

Hopefully people can now begin to see another reason why I was so fervent in my support of PEPFAR’s re-authorization. Hope this helps.

ALWAYS ONE in the Spirit, debbie
www.mpwn-uganda.org

Aid is such a huge undertaking, I’m not sure if there is single expert. So it’s nice to hear differing viewpoints, however painful.

I’ve been reading an interesting book called “Africa Doesn’t Matter: How the West Has Failed the Poorest Continent and What We Can Do About It.”

It’s a dense read, but the thing recently that struck me is the notion that aid is a huge, amorphous undertaking, and one of its biggest challenges is determining the “right aid” — i.e., the specific needs of a given area or group.

So _if_ there’s an adjustment to be made, I hope articles like this (which give one such a sad, sinking feeling to read) will end up pointing the way to helpful adjustments in the way we deliver help.

But, I also think it’s important to stress that 99% of are doing the very best we can. All we can do is modify and improve as we go.