Every child needs to be able to go to school if they are to have any chance of a brighter future. School is not only a place of academic learning that gives them vital literacy and numeracy skills and the possibility of a career, but somewhere they learn social skills and a feeling of belonging to society as a whole. Sadly, because they are living with desperately poor grandparents or extended families, many orphans cannot afford to attend. Those children who are themselves heading up a family of younger siblings are even more vulnerable to dropping out of school.
HOPEHIV supports hundreds of children, who would otherwise drop-out of school, to receive educational supplies. We have also built two schools: a community nursery school in Lighodo, Kenya and a 105 bed residential primary school for children with speech and hearing impairments in Masaka, Uganda. We currently support ongoing costs at Masaka Special Needs School, Uganda, the Good Samaritan School, Uganda and Kibera Community Pre-school, Kenya enabling some of the most vulnerable orphans in Africa to access an education.
HOPEHIV also pioneers new ways of providing orphans with educational support at community level. We currently contribute towards to the set up and running of drop-in educational support centres for orphans in Mpumulanga, South Africa with our partner MCDC. We also train teachers and set up new church based pre-schools in Harare, Zimbabwe where our PEPE Pre-school project ensures that orphans are not excluded from the government system.