Recognising the need to provide accommodation, medical services and education for child victims of the epidemic, she decided to build a ‘village’ where HIV orphans could grow up in a loving environment. Here, they receive not only the medical treatment they need, but also the guidance from a caring adult.
Hope Village was opened in 2005 and now has 12 full-time ‘parents’ looking after 85 children. There is also a school and an HIV clinic that supplies powdered milk-formula to infected local mothers in an effort to stop mother/baby transmission of the virus.
Soroptimist Club Sint-Truiden teamed up with local prize-winning artist and illustrator Raf Roefflaer and executive search company HR One to raise funds for Hope Village. Roefflaer, who has exhibited extensively in Belgium and abroad, sent his blueprints and instructions to Hope Village residents for production. The finished artworks were then shipped to Sint-Truiden, shown at a gallery and sold to fund the purchase of books, school uniforms and classroom materials for Namibia.