the State of HIV/AIDS
There are currently 38 million people living with HIV globally with 1.7 million new infections reported in 2019.
There were also 690,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2019— a reduction from the previous year, but with the availability of life-saving medications, such a large number remains a tragedy. Men and women living with HIV/AIDS are often the most economically poor and marginalized in their societies, and stigma—both internal and external—remains a barrier to many within this vulnerable population accessing the care they need.
Resilience
The year 2020 has brought some of the biggest challenges we have ever faced as an organization, but it has also opened opportunities for CARE for AIDS staff and clients to rise to the challenge and accomplish more than we could have dreamed.
“If there is one thing we’ve learned from our clients over the years, it’s that disease never gets the final word.”
Messages from our founders
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Over the last 13 years, CARE for AIDS has remained steadfastly focused on ensuring that hope is restored to the forgotten people living with HIV/AIDS through our program model. Our ultimate goal is for these beloved men and women to live fulfilled lives on Earth and beyond. Our journey has been riddled with resilience and hope—so much so that when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and the rest of the world ground to a standstill, we simply readjusted our programming and shifted to telehealth.
Our clients still battled social isolation, emotional despair, physical illnesses, economic insecurity, and spiritual persecution, so we deliberately purposed to continue serving them safely through group conference calls, telecounseling, telemedicine, and emergency food assistance. This required immense dedication from our staff who continued to model Christ.
Despite 2020 being one of the hardest years in human history, the organization managed to hit two critical milestones. First, we managed to enter and begin serving our 70th community across East Africa! More significantly, we are excited to announce that we have surpassed 20,000 graduates from the CARE for AIDS program. This means that over 60,000 children have been prevented from becoming orphans! It also means that over 20,000 people living with AIDS now experience social inclusion, emotional hope, spiritual peace, economic stability, and physical wellness.
As we embark on 2021, our staff are ready for another year of selfless and sacrificial ministry.
Thank you for walking this journey with us. We pray that together we can continue empowering people to live a life beyond AIDS in 2021!
- Cornel Onyango
Greetings and happy 2021! The disruption COVID-19 brought to the world made 2020 a year like no other. In March, COVID turned our program upside down.
Though we paused our center operations in March, we put the needs of our clients and staff first, quickly innovating and changing our program from in-person to a telephone-based platform.
Throughout this season, we served more than 90% of our active clients through the telehealth and telecounseling platforms, meaning that our clients were reached either through a message or a follow-up call for one-on-one counseling and telemedicine. We embrace innovation as one of our core values, and I believe our ability to quickly adjust our activities to virtual platforms saved lives.
Although we were not totally spared by the pandemic (four staff and six clients contracted COVID-19), all affected in our midst have recovered. Since being able to safely meet again in-person, two new centers have opened—bringing CARE for AIDS to 70 centers across East Africa. Today we celebrate those centers as well as 20,000 successful graduates from the CARE for AIDS program.
May the Lord bless you and keep you until we can see each other again.
- Duncan Kimani
In 2020, the odds were stacked against us—a global pandemic, social unrest, economic hardship—but CARE for AIDS grew by 25%.
This tells me that God, in His grace, continues to show favor to CARE for AIDS. He alone deserves praise for all this ministry has done over the past 13 years. We also learned how truly incredible our community is. You aren’t fickle in your generosity, and you lean in when times get hard. 2020 reminded us that we can’t take for granted our incredible family.
I don’t believe God wastes any experience, even a pandemic. I can see many ways that this season has prepared us for even greater impact. Our East African team grew immensely in their technological confidence, and we are launching new digital tools this year that would not have been possible without COVID preparing our team.
Similarly, our US team was forced to innovate in donor engagement without in-person meetings or trips to East Africa.
Regardless of location, we are now equipped to connect more people to our vision.
In crisis, your true values show through, and our team embodied our values with ultimate integrity—earning deeper respect from many in East Africa including our clients, staff, and partner churches.
I’ve heard it said that “good leaders have a limp.” It’s a reference to Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis. The limp is a mark of humility—the realization that you don’t have as much control as you think. It’s fair to say that many of us are limping into 2021. But, it is a powerful reminder that God is in control, and we should depend on Him a little more in the year ahead.
- Justin Miller
program overview
We exist to empower people to live a life beyond AIDS.
CARE for AIDS operates centers in multiple communities throughout East Africa, and each center is located within a local church. This method is local, cost-effective, and discreet for our clients. Each center has two local counselors who guide a cohort of HIV+ clients through a process of growth and healing. Throughout our engagement with clients, we work to empower them in five main areas: spiritual, physical, emotional, social, and economic. We do this through the series of activities below:
SPIRITUAL: Spiritual counselors share the Gospel early and often with each of the clients in the CARE for AIDS program. All clients receive a Bible, and believers are discipled in their faith.
PHYSICAL: Health counselors review proper drug adherence, hygiene, and nutrition with clients and provide a supplemental weekly food portion. Clients are enrolled in the National Hospital Insurance Fund, and when needed, we provide financial support through our Medical Endowment Fund for clients to undergo medical procedures or receive special prescriptions.
EMOTIONAL: Through one-on-one counseling and home visits, CARE for AIDS counselors address the issue of self-stigma throughout the program leading each client toward a healthy expression of dignity and self-worth.
SOCIAL: Once clients enter the program, they can see they are not alone. By participating in group counseling and forming peer support groups, clients are connected to a community of friends to encourage and assist them long after the program has ended.
ECONOMIC: Twice a month, clients attend economic empowerment seminars. Seminar topics vary from financial literacy to practical skills like soap-making and beadwork, which can be used to start a small business. Clients are also trained on how to access capital for their business by saving money with their savings group.
Our Impact
In July 2020, CARE for AIDS was invited to present at the 23rd annual International AIDS Conference. For an organization the size of CARE for AIDS, the invitation to speak to the HIV/AIDS research community on the world stage is significant and shows that our holistic approach to care is making a substantial difference in the communities where we work.
At the 2020 AIDS conference, we presented an abstract written by our Programs Manager, Lydiah Korir, our Co-Founder, Duncan Kimani,
and our Chief Operating Officer, Molly Heacock. This abstract presented both internalized stigma reduction data and viral load suppression (VLS) data from a group of over 600 CARE for AIDS clients we collected self-reported data from throughout 2018 and 2019. As you will see in the charts below, clients experienced significant improvements in these two areas. Viral load suppression is one of the major goals of the UNAIDS 95-95-95 strategy to end the AIDS epidemic, and we are proud to be one of the many leaders in the global fight.
* CARE for AIDS measures the reduction of internalized stigma by whether or not a client has disclosed their HIV status to family and friends
To learn more about the impact of the CARE for AIDS program, visit www.careforaids.org/impact
empowerment in a crisis
HOW CARE FOR AIDS IS REOPENING SAFELY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
We are thankful for what this experience has taught us, but we are even more excited to continue to celebrate alongside our future graduating classes.
Thanks to the tenacity and skill of our team in East Africa, the CARE for AIDS program continued throughout 2020, despite strict lockdowns.
CARE for AIDS paused all in-person center operations on March 16th, four days after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Kenya. Our leadership team in East Africa made the quick decision to transition the program to a 100% telephone-based model until we could safely meet in person.
Thanks to the tenacity and skill of our team in East Africa, the CARE for AIDS program continued throughout 2020, despite strict lockdowns. Health and spiritual counselors were able to reach more than 90% of clients for their weekly counseling sessions, and clients continued to receive their weekly food rations to ensure their families were well fed throughout the uncertain season.
We were also able to provide clinical support to clients through telemedicine. Registered nurses and physicians assistants on the East African team were available via phone to all clients for consults, clinic referrals, and prescriptions when necessary.
Even with the success we found with these program changes, we knew nothing could replace the power of learning and growing in community. Throughout these months of utilizing telehealth, we always looked forward to a time when we could gather together again. As we neared the end of 2020, the team in East Africa enacted protocols to ensure they could begin to meet with clients safely, wearing masks and practicing physical distancing to minimize risk. Each center reintroduced group seminars and group therapy sessions in numbers appropriate for the available meeting space— larger church partners hosted larger
groups, while smaller church partners hosted smaller groups of clients at times spread throughout the day. This allowed each class of clients to catch up on economic empowerment seminars and group therapy sessions that weren’t possible to host remotely. By October, we had the opportunity to celebrate graduating classes again. In the last quarter of 2020, 28 centers were finally able to graduate, adding more than 2,000 new graduates who are now fully equipped with the skills and confidence to live a life beyond AIDS. Thanks to the hard work and quick thinking of the East African team, the persistence and resilience of the clients, and the prayers of our dedicated CARE for AIDS family around the world, we were able to take the difficulties of a hard year and turn them into a valuable growing experience.
Meet John
As a Male Champion, John works to reduce stigma in the community and recruits other men to join the CARE for AIDS program. Since beginning this role, John has recruited more than 70 men to join the program, starting a chain reaction that has impacted hundreds of lives. John is offering his community what he was so often deprived of: love, encouragement, and someone to count on.
Staff highlight
lydiah korir, EAST AFRICA program manager
The administrative staff in the Nairobi office of CARE for AIDS needed to think quickly.
The first confirmed case of COVID-19 had hit Kenya on the 12th of March, and by the 18th, all Kenyans who were able to had been directed by the President to work from home. Leaders on the CARE for AIDS African staff made the call to immediately cease in-person gatherings in favor of a telephone-based system. At the center of that decision and its implementation was Lydiah Korir.
A trained nurse, Lydiah is uniquely qualified for her position. She is the CARE for AIDS Program Manager. Prior to joining CARE for AIDS, Lydiah managed the HIV program at Kijabe Hospital, north of Nairobi. She joined the CARE for AIDS team in 2017 as the Technical Advisor for Health Programs and by 2018 had joined the leadership team as the Program Manager. The clients at CARE for AIDS are among those most vulnerable to COVID-19, so it was imperative that
Lydiah and her team act quickly to keep them safe while still offering the services they needed to thrive. Anxiety levels were high in the beginning, and Lydiah worried that clients may get lost or left behind when the ability to physically connect with their counselors and each other was removed. To allay some of this apprehension, she and her team made it a priority to adhere as closely as possible to established center schedules. Center staff would call clients at the same time as their weekly appointments and continue their counseling sessions, making arrangements for those without phones to receive their call via a friend or family member. Center staff were able to reach more than 90% of clients weekly for telecounseling sessions. The CARE for AIDS programs team also quickly realized that with strict lockdowns put in place by governments in Kenya and Uganda affecting clients’ ability to work, they would be even more susceptible to food insecurity. The programs team engaged the governments in the necessary communities early and quickly won their approval to continue food distribution to clients enrolled in the program. Instead of a weekly food supplement, clients were given a monthly ration—allowing them to better plan ahead.
As lockdowns eased, Lydiah and the CARE for AIDS programs team began looking for the safest ways in which to operate some version of in-person center events. They made sure that every center had access to running water and soap, often purchasing hand soap in bulk from clients who had learned soap-making in CARE for AIDS economic empowerment seminars. When running water was not possible, the staff made provisions for the centers to be fully stocked with hand sanitizer. Every client was outfitted with a mask, and infrared thermometers were purchased and distributed to every center so that temperatures could be assessed before any client entered the facility.
With centers able to reopen in some capacity, food distribution resumed from those locations, and clients were able to receive in-person counseling as well. For those clients who were too sick to travel or anxious about being exposed to the coronavirus, the programs team dispatched Community Health Volunteers to deliver monthly food rations, ensuring that no client was left behind.
One innovation brought about by the COVID-19 crisis that Lydiah and the CARE for AIDS programs team are excited to continue into the future is the emergence of telehealth as a tool for more effective medical intervention for clients. At the beginning of Kenya’s quarantine, Lydiah assigned a clinical health worker on staff to each of the CARE for AIDS regions who was able to make diagnoses and write prescriptions for clients without them needing to be seen in person by a clinician. This was crucial to client health, as hospitals throughout East Africa were closed to any non-COVID patients. As centers begin to reopen and the world begins its slow climb back to normalcy, CARE for AIDS will continue to utilize both telemedicine and telecounseling when it is prudent to do so, increasing our ability to reach and serve clients wherever they are.
Making sure everyone feels seen and heard in the midst of an emergency has cemented the idea in Lydiah that CARE for AIDS is one family...
While COVID-19 remains a monumental issue and a threat to the health of our clients and staff, Lydiah is thankful for the family that CARE for AIDS has built and its response to the severity of the crisis. Throughout the most intense stretches of the pandemic, leadership both from the African and American teams have made a point to reach out often to the teams on the ground in East Africa. Making sure everyone feels seen and heard in the midst of an emergency has cemented the idea in Lydiah that CARE for AIDS is one family, and the quick thinking and decision-making of her and her team have ensured that CARE for AIDS clients can still pursue a full and vibrant life beyond AIDS.
U.S. Update
Despite the pandemic, we hit our fundraising goals and added new supporters to our generous family. Thank you for standing in the gap with us this year. We are honored, now more than ever, to have such an extensive and generous network of supporters.
Campaign Update
how your generosity IS HELPING care for aids go beyond
Thank you for being a part of this campaign. We are focusing on finishing this phase strong, and we can’t wait to share what God has in store for the next chapter of CARE for AIDS.
It has been two years since we launched the Beyond Campaign: a three-year initiative to fund the next phase of CARE for AIDS’ growth and impact.
We wanted to move beyond where we were into new communities and countries. We wanted our clients to move beyond their shame and sickness. We also wanted to invite you as donors to move beyond to a deeper partnership with CARE for AIDS.
To date, 632 donors have responded to the challenge to move beyond. Your prayers and giving have definitely propelled us beyond—even beyond a global pandemic. We had a lot of aspirations for this campaign, and the progress has been astounding.
But, as it did for everyone, COVID-19 forced us to reevaluate some of our goals. We initially set the goal of raising $17M to open our 100th center by the end of 2021.
We have reset that goal to raise $14M to complete this phase of our long-term plan to empower 100,000 people by the end of 2027. We are excited to report also that we’ve had $160,000 given towards our innovation fund. Those resources were used to design, develop, and deploy our new mobile app. We also used a portion of those funds to help us research and design our new rural pilot projects.
Innovation
Make it better. We seek to embody that simple phrase every day at CARE for AIDS. For the sake of our staff, clients, and donors, we strive for innovation. Even before the pandemic forced us to adapt, CARE for AIDS was already thinking about the tech revolution in East Africa. Learn about the mobile app we developed in 2020 to help our clients live a life beyond AIDS.
This is just one more step toward a world beyond AIDS.
Financial statements
BOARD of Directors
RANDY GRAVITT, BOARD CHAIRMAN CEO, InteGREAT Leadership
WAYNE HOOVER, VICE-CHAIRMAN VP, Field Operations - Talent, Chick-fil-A
BOBBY REAGAN, TREASURER CEO, Reagan Consulting
KYLIE WHITE, SECRETARY Blogger and Orphan Advocate
CLIFF ROBINSON Executive VP, Chief People Officer, Chick-fil-A
CHRIS CLIMO Political Law Associate, Venable
DR. AMY JAMES, PHD Organizational Psychology
SHANE DUFFEY Lead Pastor, NewSpring Church
SAM BLOSSOM Partner, M&A, PricewaterhouseCoopers
SHANNON MILES Co-Owner & Co-Founder, BELAY, Inc.
JUSTIN MILLER Co-Founder and CEO, CARE for AIDS
