Psychological help for traumatized children

In Namibia the HIV-epidemic implicates serious consequences. Five percent of all pregnant woman are infected with HIV and probably will transfer the virus to their babies while giving birth or breast-feeding them. Namibia belongs to the „South-of-Sahara-part“ of Africa where all in all 22.5 million people are suffering from AIDS. In 2007 1.6 million adults and children died because of the virus.
Christ’s Hope International (CHI) is working towards an AIDS-free world. With help of varied projects we want to realize this aim. Fields of activity are: prevention (clarifying the facts at schools), support for children (children’s homes for AIDS-orphans, food-counters), care and attention (attending AIDS-infected people).
A majority of the supported children already eperienced traumatic situations like loosing a parent, alcohol addicted parents or sexual abuse. They urgently need professional help to regain their emotional stability.
The German psychologist Julia B. will be sent by CHI to Namibia. There she is going to work together with local administration and staff members in order to analyse the needs and to develop programmes to help the families. Firstly, the work will concentrate on the therapies and psychological help for traumatized children in children’s homes and the specialized education of staff members. Furthermore, we want to enable young persons to gain more independence. We will help them to set goals for their future and to develop career perspectives.
A further step will be to support families of socially problematic districts by initiating special local help projects.
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