The Million Malawi Orphan Youngsters
More or less 12,800 miles from the United States is Malawi, Africa. The population of Malawi is 12.2 million. Virtually 1,000,000 of the people are orphans.
Lack of food, money, water and health-care are partly to blame. HIV/AIDS is answerable for over five hundred thousand of the orphans. An estimated 1,000,000 people are infected by HIV/Aids[**]. Mums pass the disease on to their newborns and never receive any sort of treatment. In the end the parent or parents die, leaving older youngsters to take care of the younger siblings or leaving the child totally alone. That cycle continues frequently every single day in Africa.
Most families have multiple kids and do not have enough funds to feed and care for everyone, so they take them to shelters or simply leave them behind hoping that they’ll be better off. Most shelters simply have no room nor the resources to take in each orphan. The need for food and cleaner water to drink is critical.
There are many hundreds of orphanages through Africa. The SOS Children’s Village do their part to make an appalling situation, have a happy ending. In the village, “mothers” are assigned to each household. Theses women make a lifetime commitment to care for the orphans they’re assigned. The assignment shortly mimics a family of siblings and sisters. A household “mother” can have up to 12 dozen children at a time. There are many of these villages across Malawi that house and support more than 5,000 orphans and other vulnerable kids.
Pop vocalist, Madonna, in addition has been doing her bit to help. In 2008, she visited the kids of Malawi and filmed a documentary about the orphan kids. She also shared with us the proven fact that she, herself, lost her mother when she was six years old. She put herself straight in the midst of the pain of these kids and has shone a light on a major issue in the world. Those kids require more people to stand up and adore and care for them.
Whether or not it’s money, support or an easy act of recognition, there’s more work to be done.
Cecilia Owens, a freelance travel writer also wrote these articles about Malawi: Suffering of Malawi children and Facts about Lake Malawi.
