On My Heart – Keeping Families Together

I sometimes hear stories that tug on my heart. One of the most difficult was told to me by Jim Kongwa, our field director in Zambia.

Like all our field directors, Jim often is approached with requests to take more children into our Kids Alive residential homes. This is especially hard in Zambia and other sub-Saharan Africa countries, where the rate of AIDS infections is the highest in the world, leaving behind a staggering number of orphans.

Not long ago a grandmother approached Jim with a grandchild that was barely a week old, but whose mother — weakened by AIDS — had died in childbirth. With no more room for babies, Jim did what he always does: he held and prayed for the child and gave the grandmother all he had to give — one tin of infant formula, and the promise to give more at the end of the month. But before the end of the month came, word arrived that the baby had died — another tiny victim of the horror which is the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

But, as Jim told me the story, he confessed that after this he was no longer able to pick up and hold every child brought to him for help. He still prayed for them, and he still did what he could to help, but it had become just too painful to take these little ones into his arms and hold them, knowing it was likely they would die soon.

This story, and many others like it, helped convince me that Kids Alive needs some way to help more children — beyond the numbers we can afford to bring into our residential homes and touch through our community care centers.

That’s why we have been testing and are now launching our new “Keeping Families Together” initiative. Through this initiative we will be able to help children with relatives who want to care for them, but simply don’t have the money or other resources — just like the baby who was brought to Jim by a loving grandmother.

Now, for just $70 per child per month, we will be able to help children while they continue to live at home with a single parent, grandparent or other relative. The “Keeping Families Together” initiative will provide food, medical care, and education for the child and training for the parent or grandparent. In this way the family is kept together, and we no longer have to completely turn children away because we have no room in one of our residential homes.

Please pray for the children and families we will be seeking to help through this new “Keeping Families Together” initiative. And pray for the compassionate Kids Alive workers who — like Jim — have long suffered over seeing far more children in need than they could help. And as you pray for these great needs, also consider giving generously to help support “Keeping Families Together.” Without your partnership — in prayer and through your financial support — none of this would be possible.

Thanks again, and God bless you.

Alfred Lackey, President