By Chioma Obinna
Tope, 5, and Biola, 7, were living happily with their parents. They never lacked the good things of life. They had the best of everything. But fate played a trick on them.

Their woes began when their mother was pregnant with her third child. A routine laboratory test during one of her antenatal care sessions turned out to be the turning point for her and her family.

She went into the consulting room full of expectations, but came out with all her hopes dashed. She was HIVpositive? How? When? Why? Questions, no answers.

With tears in her eyes, she pondered over how she would she break the bad news to her family, particularly her husband.  She thought and thought, but found no easy way out. At last, she opened up.

There were more tears, accusations amongst others when itwas discovered he was also positive. It was the beginning of the end. To cut a long story short, eventually, both of them passed away, leaving Tope, Biola and the little baby to the care of no one in particular.

The baby was also living with HIV.  The children who were once comfortable all of a sudden became beggars.  They were out of school. To eat a square meal a day became the most difficult task. The little baby, cannot access appropriate treatment and care.

Tope and Biola with their little baby along with thousands of other vulnerable children and those orphaned by HIV & AIDS are roaming the streets. They are orphaned by HIV & AIDS, but succour appears to be at hand as there are interventions to ameliorate their plight.

Last week, two Non Governmental Organisations, Olive Leaf Charity Foundation (OLCF) and Centre for Microentreprise Development (CMD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to train these children and their caregivers in Shomolu, Ikorodu, Epe and Badagry local government areas of Lagos State.

The MOU, according to Programme Manager  OLCF, Mr. Adegbola Abiodun, became necessary as the caregivers whom the 11,000 children currently being taken care of by the Foundation needed to be economically self sufficient to be able to take care of the children apart from the fact that the organisation pays their school fees and provide things like school uniforms, clothing, books amongst others.

Adegbola said “We cannot make an impact in the lives of these children and the community without an economic sustenance for the people who are living with these children. The major issue at hand when we talk about HIV and AIDS is poverty and to ensure that these relatives or community people taking care of these children have sustainable sources of income, we, in collaboration with CMD must train them in various skills and also source loans for them. We believe when these caregivers are economically empowered, there will be less problems in taking care of these orphaned and vulnerable children.

Calling for support from Nigerian individuals and corporate organisations, Adegbola who stated that currently the organisation is working with 13 organisations explained that out of the 11,000 OVCs, OLCF has 5,000 while  8,000 are from other organisations.

On the five-year project, he said they have been able to rescue many children from the streets, train some out of secondary schools while some have graduated from primary to secondary schools so far.

They are fine-tuning strategies to see how they can take up university education of these children as currently the organisation only takes care of them from age one to age 18.

“To keep hope alive, we have established different kid clubs in schools to build the self esteem of these children. The ones living with HIV, we assist them to access their drugs. We support them nutritionally too. These children have dreams we are determined to help them achieve. Many of them are really doing well. We are seriously reviewing how to take them beyond age 18.”

Training & Marketing Executive of CMD, Mr. Segun  Iroko explained that the MOU would focus on entrepreneurship development training for these caregivers.  At the end of the training, they would be assessed and linked with microfinance banks or other institutions to get funds to establish their trades.