GRAPEVINE, Texas (ABP) — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a Texas Baptist charity have begun a partnership to help combat the growing AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa.
The partnership with Buckner Orphan Care International was announced during CBF's annual general assembly in Grapevine, Texas, June 30-July 1.
Buckner Orphan Care International is a division of Buckner Baptist Benevolences, a large charity conglomerate with historic ties to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Buckner currently has programs to assist orphans in nine countries outside the United States.
The Fellowship and Buckner have previously partnered in a program to assist children in five counties clustered in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, which are among America's poorest. The program, called KidsHeart, facilitates church mission trips and other benevolent projects in more than a dozen crowded population centers — known in Spanish as colonias.
By 2003, 15 million children worldwide had been orphaned by AIDS, with 12 million of those in sub-Saharan Africa, said Ken Hall, Buckner's president. That number is expected to rise to 18 million by 2010.
The CBF/Buckner partnership, to be called “KidsHeart Africa,” will target nations in sub-Saharan Africa, beginning with pilot projects in Kenya and South Africa, where the organizations already have some infrastructure in place.
The program will focus on establishing new child-development centers and supplement existing ones to serve as a community resource for relatives and older children who are caring for younger orphans.
The total cost for constructing and staffing one unit — which consists of a child development center and five church-operated nursery schools — is about $70,000, Hall said. That figure includes start-up costs and staffing for three years.
Ideally, each “integrated child development center” will be linked to five church-operated nursery schools. Providing preschool education will give orphaned children a head start on school, Hall said, while offering respite or work opportunities to those who normally care for the children.
The centers will provide some medical and humanitarian services, but will also focus on education in hopes of guiding children away from the risky behaviors that lead to contracting the virus that causes AIDS.
For those interested in the project, Hall said the most important thing they can do is go to Africa and see the vast need for themselves. He also encouraged churches and individuals to adopt specific projects in the program.
Projects will be field-generated, he said, as CBF and Buckner personnel work together with representatives of the All Africa Baptist Fellowship and national Baptist unions in the region.