Seetha belongs to the most disadvantaged caste and class of the community. In addition, HIV has affected leaving her mother widowed by HIV and younger sister with HIV. She has an elder sister who was married early to support the family. Situation became worse when she also started depending on her natal family for financial support. Seetha, the second child in the family developed her dream to be a medical professional as she was doing well in her stud-ies. She had scored (more than 90%) in her 10th public exam, while in her 12th standard the pressures of sharing the burden of care of her mother, sister and frequent power cuts made her secure only around 70%. Seetha applied for Bsc Nursing and got her seat through Counseling under self-finance but she opted to study outside her village for a better exposure and learning. This is amazing and inspiring for all of us, because in the midst of many families losing heart and life after affected by HIV; here is a courageous child took the challenge to pursue her nursing degree in Bangalore. She even expressed that “it is the exposures she had got from well-wishers who

visited Buds of Christ and trainings through life skills programme that has made her to set higher goals and take firm decisions”. Her mother expressed “I thank God and I would like to see my daughter serve suffering people with love and compassion”

At this point we thank all our friends and well-wishers who have made a visit to Buds of Christ and have spent time interacting with our chil-dren which is making a greater impact. In re-cent months, we and our children were encour-aged with visits by Mr. Yugendra from Chen-nai, Ms Margaret and Ms Melissa from Singa-pore International Foundation.

Rani (name changed) is 16 years old and living with HIV. Her parents died due to AIDS and were looked after by her grandfather. Everything was normal till she received her 10th public exam results. She had failed in two subjects and on reappearing; she did not clear her exams. She was at home and during that time, other relatives who did not know her

status tried looking for marriage propos-als. Her grandfather knows about her HIV status, he was very firm in not get-ting her married at this age. But Rani meanwhile got into relationship with a boy in the neighbouring village and married without informing her living status to the boy. Rani is not in touch with any of her family members right now.

Positive Prevention among Adolescents living with HIV/AIDS - emerging need

It always seems impossible until its done

Buds Voices Oct 2012

From the Desk; We are happy to come back to you with the second issue of Bud’s voices and share the latest devel-opments with children and Buds of Christ in Tiruchengode. We sin-cerely hope you had enjoyed read-ing what we had presented in the last update issue.

This quarter, we would like to present you some of the major developments like the strategic planning of our organization, shift-ing of our premises to a new loca-tion and some new initiatives that we have taken forward. In this quarter, we also had challenging moments that pressed us down in our work with adolescent children. At the same time, it has been courtesy calls and wishes from well-wishers that encouraged us to keep going with the vision that we had come to tiruchengode.

I would also like to thank all the well-wishers who have taken time to talk to us , visited us at the center and supported us in this work with children. We would be very happy to have your feedback and thoughts about the news letter.

For private circulation only

Volume 1 | Issue 2

www.budsofchrist.org

THANK YOU DONORS and SUPPORTERS.

TOGETHER WE MADE IT... Buds of Christ has been able to get a permanent space on the GLOBAL GIVING web-site, an international platform to support Buds of Christ.

Upcoming EVENT We are planning to celebrate CHRISTMAS get-together on 28th Dec 2012. We cordially invite you to be part of the BIG FAMILY of BUDS

For your support and visits; please contact julie@budsofchrist.org

Orphans and Widows in Hindi

The first publication from Buds of Christ titled “Orphans and Widows: Christian lead-ers response” has been well received now trans-lated in Hindi and pub-lished for NGO’s work-ing in North India.

In the recent times, we are coming across such instances where the ado-lescent girls are getting married to boys, without their HIV status dis-closed to their partners. This is found mostly among young people who have dropped out of school, especially girls who have failed in their 10th exams and are either complete orphans or semi-orphans (living with one parent). It sets the need for more focused inter-ventions among young people living with HIV, and talking about sexual and re-productive health and prevention of HIV. In Tamilnadu alone there are around 10,000 children living with HIV who have enrolled with Government Health

services. Currently medicines against HIV help have helped many children grow into adolescence and live a normal and productive life. At Buds of Christ, there are now five young people living with HIV who are leaders of influence to

other younger children to live a re-sponsible and pro-ductive life.

Recent Publications

AIDS in India : An Article about Buds of Christ’s work with children affected by

HIV and AIDS has been published in the book “AIDS in India” released by CANA.

Copies of these two books can be availed from Buds of Christ and CANA. Please email jpaul@budsofchrist.org if you need

Page 2

Glimpse of little stars in action facilitated by BUDS LEADERS

Buds Voices

Positive Prevention among Adolescents living with HIV/AIDS - emerging need

day ,every month I become very up-set. But now I am so happy, I am able to meet many friends who also take tablets like me. Now it is my mother who stands in the queue for medicines while we have games, puz-zles and even make crafts. I enjoy and I like the Akka’s and Anna’s who conduct the sessions.-11 year old girl living with HIV in Namakkal GH. These group meetings are conducted

by trained Buds Leaders (young people living with HIV), every sec-ond Saturday at Government hos-pital and every third Saturday at Tiruchengode center.

Little stars meeting for children living with HIV aged 8-13 years was different with more puzzles, games and songs. This helped them to in-teract with each other better and also found support among them-selves. I used to hate coming to hospital with my mother, because they draw out blood and give a box of very big medicines. When I think of the

Little Stars—Support Group Meetings

Now I am so happy, I am able to meet many friends who also take tablets like

me...

Vetri kootam meetings are organised once in a month for adolescents living with HIV to share their concerns and fears and find support from one –another, and also gain knowledge on treatment information and life skills to cope with the stress due to HIV infec-tion.

In this quarter, two sessions were organ-ised for Vetri kootam members (adolescent support group) on the im-mune system and its functions and the common opportunistic infections and about ART medication (educational ses-sion). First session was facilitated by the peer leader, Karthikeyan with the Mod-ule developed by Buds of Christ for ITPC while the second meeting was facilitated by Ms. Vijayalakshmi, ART counselor from the Tiruchengode government ART

center.

“I was personally benefitted from the programme, because I had recently started the medication and I was very casual because I could not cope with the

side effects. Noticing that I was not regular anna and akka in Buds of Christ used to motivate me to be regular. For that moment, I will take medicines, but then when I am af-fected by vomiting and dizziness, I will stop it. In this session when Viji akka shared the detailed facts about the treatment and the impor-tance of adhering to the treatment, I felt I should be very regular, es-pecially now that I am in 10th, I should be healthy to appear for my

exams. I want to be a bank officer, so I should be healthy.” - Orphan boy, 14 years living with HIV, living with his aunt.

to take medicines against HIV and for this her status has to be disclosed to her. On knowing the status, her immediate response was “why me of all the people. It is a shame to live with the virus, I want to die.” Shalini our peer leader and Karthik were con-ducting a support group session with other children living with HIV at the hospital prem-ises. On hearing this, Geetha our staff and Shalini went ahead to enquire Vinita and a touch by Shalini helped Vinita to calm herself. Slowly, after allowing her to share her emo-

tions, Shalini shared her own life of living with HIV, coping with the infection and how she can be of support to other children living with HIV in the district. This helped Vinita to come out of the immediate stress of knowing her status and even realize that there is life be-yond HIV infection. Shalini is following her up through phone calls and encouraging her on a constant basis. Buds of Christ develops peer leaders like Shalini to be a support and positive influencer for children and young people living with HIV

Vinita is 16 years old coming from a remote village in Namakkal district. It was one such day, on Saturday the 15th of September she had come with her mother for her routine health check–up. Till that day, she was not aware about why she was going through these tests and her parents had not told anything about HIV. Her parents are already on treat-ment, but when she enquired about it, they used to say to her reasons, other than HIV. Only on that day, when she was tested, the counselor at the hospital had told her parents that her immunity was very low and so she has

challenges that we started planning many pro-grammes and worked at a wider level. This resulted in draining our energy and resources on many good things and not able to give our best on the exclusive group we work with - Julie

We were able to realize that we cannot do eve-rything if we need to make a larger impact, so

It has been both exciting and revisiting exer-cise for us (staff and volunteers) at Buds of Christ to reflect on the current activities and the future plans with the vision to empower children and enable well-being. This was facili-tated by an international Organizational De-velopment consultant, Mr. Hong –Yi through the Singapore International Foundation, Volun-teer Programme.

This exercise helped me to distinguish be-tween good work and the best work. In our work, we got carried away by the needs and

networking with like-minded agencies will help us work on the needs and concerns of vulner-able children living with and affected by HIV

and AIDS - Jpaul

I was happy to see that chil-dren could see our work unique to other agencies working in the district as an agency that offers space for the overall development of the individual - Geetha

Volume 1, Issue 1

Strategic planning of Buds of Christ-Hong Yi-SIF support

Vetrikootam — Support group for adolescents

Fruits of Our Labour

Page 3

164, 1st Floor, Kootapalli Housing Board colony Tiruchengode 637 214 NAMAKKAL District, TN, India

BUDS OF CHRIST

All children have equal rights

irrespective of their physical condition...

Children expressing their RIGHTS through cartoons.

Right to form groups and right to choose friends…

Phone: +91 4288 281722 E-mail: budsofchrist@gmail.com

Children’s Corner

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All donations to BUDS OF CHRIST are exempted from Income Tax under 80 (G)

Empowering children | Enabling wellbeing Buds of Christ formed on January 2007 exists to empower children from the most disadvantaged communities, with a focus among orphan children who have lost their parent/s and in difficult circumstances of poverty, caste discrimi-nated communities and HIV & AIDS. We recognize that chil-dren without the care of parents or guardian are often vul-nerable to various forms of abuses and exploitation. We strive to empower these children to reduce their vulnerabil-ity and help them grow up to be capable adults in this world.

We believe that unless children are empowered towards sur-vival and development, protection and participation, their wellbeing is not complete. Thus we work with a mission with children to “to love, listen, learn and lead orphans and vul-nerable children to live life positively and with dignity and be children of hope and courage to their peers and to their community”