Esperence Akimanizanye

For the past two years, PFR has offered a program to support a group of 35 widows from the genocide who are infected with HIV/AIDS. PFR's goal is to assist them in counseling the women (many are rape victims from the 1994 genocide), help the women create a shared business cooperative to generate income, and teach the women how to live healthy lives.

However, teaching can only go so far. Since the business cooperative is just beginning to take form (the women are only just beginning to sell their items, since it took them a very long time to learn how to make the crafts), many of the women do not have access to finances that let them live healthy lifestyles.

Today, a PFR staff member saw this woman, Esperence, who is infected with HIV/AIDS breastfeeding her baby.

Esperence could be infecting her baby with HIV/AIDS because she does not have enough money to feed her child alternative nutritional supplements. When she was explaining her situation to PFR staff members, tears were welling up in her eyes. She was in distress that she could not feed her own child. PFR staff thinks that the reason Esperance did not tell PFR staff earlier that she was breastfeeding her child is because she was embarrassed of her condition and her inability to help her own child.

Because of what happened today, PFR started looking around in other places where this could be happening. Two other women in the PFR women cooperative are struggling with this very same problem. Similarly, 12 HIV positive female inmates who have their babies with them in prison are forced to breast feed their children due to no other nutritional options in prisons.

While PFR hopes that in the near future, the women will make enough income from their sales in their cooperative to support themselves and their families, currently they are not receiving enough income to care for their health. While PFR is doing everything they can right now to make sure that these women get alternative nutritious supplies as soon as possible, the food is expensive and PFR is calling for additional support from our friends all over the world to help these women. PFR wants to be able to provide them with nutritional alternatives for their children until the women start to earn a steady income from their crafts.

Please donate now to allow PFR to provide alternate supplements for the babies and also for healthy food for the women. If you donate through PFI, please be sure to write "support PFR Women's HIV/AIDS Ministry" in the appropriate space.