The Selamta Project

The Devastation of AIDS

The Devastation of AIDS The AIDS pandemic is hollowing out a generation in sub-saharan Africa, and other regions in the developing world. The results are tens of millions of marginalized women, hopeless elders, and orphaned children. The devastation is destroying families, the most elemental building block of a successful society.

A Generation of Orphans

There are over four million children orphaned by AIDS and other devastating circumstances, in Ethiopia alone. The most fortunate of these are cared for by extending family members who are themselves stretched beyond ther means. But the overwhelming majority are are separated from their siblings, and abandoned to the streets or into orphanages where they routinely encounter violence, predation or abuse. They are joined in poverty by millions of displaced elders and women who have lost their means of sustenance as their adult children and husbands are lost to AIDS.

A Destroyer of Families

The family structure that teaches care, respect and responsibility and forms the foundation of a strong, productive society, has come apart in regions ravaged by AIDS. What becomes of a nation and its people, when when an entire generation is left to orphanages and the street? No amount of charity can overcome this tragedy. All the food in the world will not nourish children who are left to raise themselves. Education alone will not overcome the loss they suffer, nor can it impart values absorbed within a family that offers safety, care and love.

A Society in Crisis

There is no societal safety net in regions devastated by AIDS. Traditional NGOs are focusing on tactical services, offering temporary sustenance but little hope for renewal. Imagine the result of millions of children growing up on the street, separated from siblings and extended family, and forced to rely on servitude, crime or charity to survive.

More orphanages are not the answer, because institutionalized food and shelter satisfy only the most basic human needs. International adoption, though well-intentioned, reaches a fraction of one percent of children in need, and often leaves behind siblings and other family members who deeply grieve their loss. Adopted children also suffer from the loss of those left behind, and the sights, sounds and smells of their homeland.

How Selamta Offers Hope

New solutions are needed to repair the social fabric in Ethiopia and other regions devastated by AIDS. Many organizations exist to feed, house, even educate the refugees of the pandemic, but none to re-establish the stable families that produce independent, productive citizens. Children simply deserve room to grow in a predictable home, supported with proper nutrition, health care, education and love.

The Selamta Project is proving that these objectives are not beyond our reach. Over the past four years, we have tested the power of a formula that takes children from the streets, reunites them with lost siblings, stabilizes them emotionally, and creates a new family around them. In the process, we have established new family homes in a constellation around a center that serves newly arriving children and the community at large.

Selamta is a unique and successful model, and our mission is to grow into a platform for positive change throughout Ethiopia, Africa and beyond.