Project Empowering Women Living with HIV

Illien Adoptions International, Inc. is working collaboratively with the Ethiopia-based Bete-Se`ida Hitsanat Merja Maheber on a project to assist and empower women living with HIV. In the summer of 2010, Bete-Se`ida's project received approval from the Ethiopian government and launched a pilot program. Illien Adoptions International, Inc. is one of the organizations who have committed to invest in the well-being of HIV+ women, many of whom are mothers trying to build futures for their children. We invite our friends and adoptive families to help us raise funds so that more can be done! 

The project has a three-fold strategy for empowering these women to face the future with hope:

• Emotional and Physical Support System. The first phase of Bete-Se`ida's program is to help these women adjust emotionally to their reality of being HIV+. The program provides a safe place for HIV+ women to gather together during the day, cook and talk together, wash themselves and their laundry, and bring their children to play together. Here they can find a close-knit community where they can open up about their fears and know that they are not alone, and not without hope.


• Education and Professional Training. The second phase of the program helps the women discern what they would like to do in order to make a living, and then invests in the women's education. A woman may be interested in cooking, becoming a hair-dresser, or weaving, etc.--and the project enables her to enroll in training for whatever interests her.


• Enablement Toward Self-Sufficiency. The program's third phase helps women get started in their own self-sustaining endeavors via vocational mentoring and micro-financing (separately funded). Ideally, they will be able to work, doing what they love while financially supporting themselves and their children. Eventually, the program's "graduates" will serve as models and mentors for newly-diagnosed HIV+ women coming into the program in the future.

TANGIBLE, LONG-LASTING HELP AND HOPE
For many women in Ethiopia, a positive diagnosis of HIV spells "certain death." Ethiopian women who have just been diagnosed with HIV do find themselves in desperate circumstances beyond what they can understand or bear. On top of that, they are often blamed for their condition. Widespread misunderstanding and the threat of being totally cut out of society are enough to keep an HIV+ woman from seeking healthcare, enough to keep her quiet about needful precautions during childbirth, enough to keep her nursing her baby (in spite of the certain danger of transmitting the virus), and enough to drive her eventually to make one of the most difficult decisions possible--having to ask someone else to care for her child once she's gone. By giving today, you can prevent the despair that leads to death, and empower women to LIVE with hope for their sake and their family's.

To avoid recognition in her home community, an HIV+ woman may visit clinics clear across town and secretly travel to a government facility to apply for help. Through this program, the Ethiopian government has arranged to send some of these women into the care of Bete-Se`ida (as many women as the project's funding can accommodate). The plan is for this phenomenal program to prosper and to become a model for reproducing elsewhere. Then there will be multiple facilities designed to lift up HIV+ women and children--not only in the sub-cities of Addis Ababa, but eventually in the regions outside the city.

Illien Adoptions International is delighted to be one of the program's supporters, and we hope many others will join the efforts!

If you would like more information about this project or any of our programs, please contact us!

Tell us about yourself and ask questions through our online form, explore our adoption program descriptions country-by-country, and read more about HIV adoption or our Waiting Children Program. For more information about waiting children, specifically children who are HIV+, please contact Joy McCarnan at joy@illienadoptions.org, or call (404) 815.1599.

* More photos and news updates from this project coming soon! Thank you for your patience!