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Zoe Lang makes a difference in Zambia

This summer I spent two months in Africa, the first month of which I spent living and volunteering in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. I worked at three grass-roots projects in Lusaka – a community school in one of the city’s poorest compounds, Kondwa Centre in Ng’ombe compound, Kondwa meaning ‘Be Happy’ in the local language. I also used funds raised in the months running up to my trip to buy and donate footballs, netballs and volleyballs from Alive & Kicking – a charity based in Zambia and Kenya which employs previously unemployed locals to stitch leather footballs printed with health messages.

The majority of my time was spent with children from the Transit Home where I lived. Transit Home cares for 30 HIV-positive children between the ages of 3–18 and is part of a larger charitable trust in Lusaka, HEAL Project (HEAL stands for HIV Empowered and Living) which also includes a community school and tailoring, carpentry and bead workshops for HIV-positive men and women in the Ng’ombe community.

The challenges faced by those who are HIV-positive are many: stigma, exclusion, abuse. Most of the children living at Transit Home have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS and have suffered terribly as a result of their positive status. They have come to live at the Transit Home with Jean Mulenga, a Zambian HIV+ widow who runs HEAL Project, because their extended families can’t or won’t care for them.

At the Transit Home these 30 children have a home, a loving family, good education and proper healthcare... but a very poor diet, usually consisting of maize, rice, cabbage, tomatoes, beans and not much else! These are young, growing children in vital need of good nutrition because they are on constant, aggressive medication for their HIV and are very susceptible to opportunistic infections.

Just a glass of milk or an egg, and one piece of fruit every day would transform their vitamin and mineral intake, and thus their growth and overall health. So we are starting a Heal Project Nutrition fund to try and achieve exactly that for every child living at the Transit Home, at the cost of just £2 per child per week.

See the gallery

The photos you see here are of children from Transit Home and Kondwa Centre in a friendly football match I organised, wearing Clifton College shirts kindly donated by Clifton College Upper School – the children felt very important to be in proper team kit for the first time!

It’s the small things that make a huge difference to these children.

For more information on any of these projects, please contact:
Zoe Lang (Clifton alumnus 2000–2006) zoe.lang@univ.ox.ac.uk
HEAL Project (UK Charity no. 1120416)

30 September 2010

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