hopebuilding

Coping with the grief and loss of AIDS: memory projects bring hope to Africa

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Coping with the grief and loss of HIV/AIDS: memory projects bring hope in Africa

The Memory project began in Uganda in 1998 to support children who were facing the prospect of losing their HIV-positive parents. "Children could hear NACWOLA mothers talking on the TV and radio about living with HIV, but their own mothers had said nothing,” explains Anett Biryetega, national coordinator for the National Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (NACWOLA).

"The NACWOLA women realised the importance of communicating with children to help them cope with their situation and this formed the basis of the Memory project. Mothers were trained with the skills to communicate about HIV and eventually disclose their positive status to their children. Developing these skills gives families time to talk about all the issues that come with having HIV in the family. It gives children the opportunity to plan ahead; it helps them find ways to cope while their parents are still living." NACWOLA identify mothers who have the potential to train other mothers and in this way communication skills are passed through the community.

Part of this memory work centres on the Memory Book (or what has become known in South Africa, which adapted the idea, as the Memory Box). The book documents important family history and includes photos, stories, souvenirs, and a family tree. “It is used to give children a sense of who they are, and includes details of the support they can receive when they lose a parent."

In South Africa, Jonathan Morgan used the memory book idea in working with women in Soweto. This eventually developed into the Memory Box Project, and then the Memory Action Projects, which includes other forms of working with memory including body mapping. In October 2003, through the Regional Psycho Social Support Initiative, a group of organizations came together to create the Ten Million Memory Project, which hopes to reach at least 10 million children across Africa with memory approaches by 2010.

National Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda (NACWOLA), P.O. Box 4485, Kampala. E-mail.

For other stories about children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, see:

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