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LOVING CARE FOR AIDS ORPHANS
The word "Agape" is a Greek word that means "unconditional love". The Agape Home provides a loving family environment for children with or at risk for HIV/AIDS who have been orphaned, abandoned or relinquished.
What is the need?
When a child in Thailand is born to a mother who is HIV positive, that child is at an immediate risk. Not just for their own health and HIV status, but also for the possibility of becoming an orphan. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is still a major concern in Thailand. The numbers are on the rise once again and more and more children are being left orphaned by this disease. Currently there are over half a million children orphaned due to AIDS in Thailand.
One of these children was a baby girl called Nikki. After her birth, she was abandoned at the hospital by her parents, and later tested positive for HIV. She ended up critically ill in a government orphanage - but captured the heart of an orphanage volunteer, who was determined to rescue her.
How do we help:
We support Nikkis Place/The Agape Home in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This special home was opened by the orphanage volunteer, Avis Rideout, and her husband Roy in May 1996 to give HIV-positive babies like Nikki a loving, family environment.
• All of the children who come to the Agape Home to live are, or are at risk of being, HIV positive. Many of them have already lost their parents to AIDS and have been abandoned.
• The children and babies are cared for by a full-time staff of Thai nannies and foreign volunteers, who work in two daily shifts.
• Activities include art and craft, dress-up time, simple cooking lessons, music, exercise and a weekly field trip to exciting locations like the train station, zoo and park.
• The children at the Agape Home range in age from newborn babies to 15-16 year old teens.
• Volunteers come from all over the world to help care for the children in this rural setting; each volunteer may stay from 6 months to one year.
• As the children have grown, Agape Home has moved to a new purpose-built building where children aged 18 months to 4 years can attend preschool on-site daily. Older children are driven by the Agape van to the local school, just down the street.
• If any of the Agape children need to go to hospital, they are accompanied by a nanny who provides most of the in hospital care. This includes overnight, so that no child is left alone when most in need.
• Agape Home has a capacity to grow and serve the children in Thailand even more. There are currently over 70 children living here with a capacity for 100.
• The Mother and Baby Unit is an additional facility that provides housing where sick HIV-positive mothers can stay together with their children until the mother is well enough to care for herself again. If the mother passes away, the child then moves in to the Agape Home. The MBU also accepts women who have no children but have been abandoned by their families. The Mother and Baby Unit provides assistance to these mothers and their children by supplying food, shelter, clothing and facilitates medical care through the medical clinic on site.
• The Agape Home also reaches out to the community through Project Lek, which seeks to provide assistance to HIV positive children in the community who are living at home with family members. The project enables families to stay together.
How it's changing lives:
"Lives have been touched by the power of love that people feel and see at the Agape Home," says Avis Rideout, now Director of the Agape Home.
• Orphaned and abandoned HIV/AIDS children now have a loving home and educational opportunities.
• HIV-positive mothers can stay with their children in a separate facility whenever possible
• The community is reached out to through Project Lek
• The children can be treated through the Agape Home medical clinic
How baby Nikki's life was turned around:
When Avis Rideout first met Nikki as a baby in the HIV/AIDS section of the government orphanage, she says "a strong bond quickly developed between us. From the beginning, I wanted to give this little girl the kind of love and care that she could only receive in a family. At first, the director refused to let us adopt her, saying it was impossible for anyone to adopt a child with AIDS. They let us take her home for a visit, and later gave permission for her to become part of our family.
"When Nikki first came home to live with us, she was quite ill. She had many of the hallmark symptoms associated with AIDS including diarrhea, ear infections, nosebleeds, and an enlarged liver and spleen. She also had had a large cyst removed from the side of her head near the temple, so she was almost bald.
"Nikki was brought back to health and back to life with love and good care. She is a beautiful, vivacious child who continues to be a delight to us all.
"We have since adopted Nikki who is now a teenager and still in excellent health. She knows she is loved and accepted into our family, the same way the Agape children know they are loved and accepted too."
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