Children's Center

A Good and Valuable Neighbor

Our Selamta mission includes reaching out into the community as a good neighbor, and offering support to families struggling with HIV/AIDS. Our children, moms and aunties have not only lost their loved ones to the pandemic, they have been shunned and separated from their own communities. Through societal ignorance, they have been denied education and health care, and are systematically ostracized.

One of our greatest challenges is to re-integrate our Selamta children and households into a neighborhood conditioned to distrust and fear them. We address this challenge by encouraging our children to distinguish themeselves through excellence in school, sports and behavior. We also systematically reach out to help those less fortunate, and to provide education and examples that shatter the fear and ignorance surrounding HIV/AIDS.

Selamta's Community Outreach

As Selamta has established itself in the neighborhood, families who are struggling with AIDS and often hiding in shame, have gradually made themselves known to us. Men and women who are infected with the disease, and who may have already lost their spouses, realize that their children are soon facing the censure of the community and abandonment to the streets.

Today, Selamta supports twenty-eight kids in fifteen households impacted by AIDS, and is steadily expanding the program throughout the surrounding community.

From Family to Family

Our sponsored families join us in the Children's Center for Sunday lunches and celebrations, and the children are gradually becoming close brothers and sisters to our other children in care.

We see parents experience a tremendous sense of relief and gratitude, as they realize that their children will be enfolded into a familiar, loving environment when they pass away. In the meantime, our assistance allows the family to remain intact during an extremely challenging period of struggle with the disease.

Improved Living Standards

Selamta assistance to families in our neighborhood, and our support of schools and health care facilities, all contribute to a stronger immediate community. We strive to be a positive force for transformation and change.

In addition to the families we sponsor in the Bethel neighborhood, Selamta has a directly positive financial impact on our in-country staff, their families, extended families and communities. We pay generous wages that contribute to improved living standards for over 300 people in the greater Addis Abbaba area.

A Scalable, Sustainable Advance

The Selamta Children's Center, Family Homes and Community Outreach all work together to lift orphans, vulnerable children, marginalized women and AIDS-impacted families from stigma and abandonment, while creating an ever-widening circle of tolerance, commitment and care. The model creates a virtuous cycle that provides effective answers to the challenges of the global AIDS pandemic and extreme poverty.