Our goal is to raise global awareness to the overlooked but growing challenge of caring for Africa’s most vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS and their elderly caregivers.  At the same time, we want to mobilize as many people as possible to take action by adopting a grandmother and her family for $25 a month.  Adopt-a-Grandmother.

 

ARK does not support or promote Institutional Care or Orphanages

 

While institutions and orphanages have become a popular method to fill in the gap, they should not be promoted to take over family and community care. Such places should be a last resort simply because they are too expensive to maintain and often separate families and isolate children from the larger community and culture.

 

With approximately 14 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa estimated to be orphaned by AIDS, grandmothers have become unsung heroes. The UNAIDS estimates that over 60% of AIDS orphans live in homes headed by the elderly with little to no stable income. Only a small number of African governments have policies and programs that focus on supporting such families.

 

Grandmothers often experience severe breakdowns despite their good intentions to care for their grandchildren. They are struggling to survive. Grandmothers often face overwhelming financial burdens on top of other parenting challenges that confront older individuals.  In many cases, African grandmothers face this burden alone. This burden has become an epidemic as adult children continue to die of AIDS and leave their children in the care of ailing grandparents.

 

To address this challenge, ARK has developed several comprehensive programs that provide on going support to grandmothers who are the primary caretakers of their grandchildren.  ARK has trained and continues to train community based caseworkers who provide timely support to grandparent-headed families to better support the healthy growth of their grandchildren. ARK provides the following services and resources:

• Our “Adopt-a-Grandmother” program involves individuals or groups providing guaranteed monthly financial assistance and other direct support services to grandmothers of orphaned and vulnerable children
  
  
• Programs to help grandmothers adjust to their new role as parents to their grandchildren.  Assistance varies from community to community and from family to family, as identified by our local staff or partner organizations
  
  
• Financial planning and management
  
  
• Counseling offering coping mechanisms
  
  
• Support to secure and maintain adequate shelter for the grandmother’s growing families
  
  
• Academic support to school age children living with grandparents
  
  
• Preventative health education targeting older citizens
  
  
• HIV outreach activities targeting those who are over 55 years old
  
  
• Free cell-phone provided to grandmothers with sick grandchildren

 

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