SIM Nigeria

Spring of Life is the support arm of The ECWA AIDS Ministry (TEAM), with activities including home visiting, voluntary testing and counseling (VCT), and community-building activities. See Susan Bertrand's short article about the Kids Club.

Here is a short (6 minute) video with pictures of the children in the Kids Club, as well as a few shots of the adults' Spring of Life club meeting. These support groups have played a big role in the lives of our clients, building a sense of community, caring, and teamwork, and helping eliminate the stigma of HIV. The pictures and footage here were shot in 2005. Nearly all the kids were living with HIV at the time, and most are still doing well, with many on antiretroviral therapy.

(Click on the player to start. If your connection is too slow for this video, see the low resolution version instead, or press pause on the player, wait until the video finishes loading, reaching 100%, then press play again).

By Anna Beth Wildman
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:13-16).

Elizabeth

I glance at Elizabeth’s mother, Sarah, who is very thin. She sits expressionlessly, too tired to care.

Smiling Kids' Club children outside Spring of Life

 See  video of Kids Club

Outreach workers addressing crowd at VCT outreach in Jengre

As we expand our HIV voluntary counseling and testing to rural areas, we are finding something that surprised us all. Not only are people willing to be tested, but they want to be tested.

At first we were afraid people would not want to be seen being tested because of the stigma it might produce. However, as we discovered at an outreach in Jengre, this is just not the case. We had people waiting in line before we arrived each day and we could not test all those that wanted to be tested, even though we tested 700 people in two and one half days.