AJAN appeal 2013 – Part 2

Help AJAN to build a new home for Kouka, Pauline, Edwige and Clarisse. All are widows living with HIV who are struggling to raise their children alone and who lost their makeshift homes in floods that swept across the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, in September 2009.

Their lives have become more uncertain than ever since then, not least because poverty and persistent stigma make renting a place difficult.

The women are members of a local organisation called the Association Solidarité, Vie et Santé (ASVS – Association of Solidarity, Life and Health), which was co-founded by the late Fr Jean-Luc Masson SJ to reach out to people with HIV in great need.

In 2012, AJAN channelled a grant to the ASVS to build small houses for some of the homeless women. Agnes was one of those who got a new home. She said: “Now that I have my own home, my life has changed for the better. I’m so much happier, it’s as if I’ve been released from prison. I can sleep peacefully, arrange my belongings around me as I please, and no one bothers me. Truly I am better off.”

In the first part of our Easter appeal, we introduced you to Mamouna, who also benefited from available funding. “Some of us have a new house now, and we are happy,” she said. “But when we see other women with AIDS who suffer because they don’t have a decent place to live, we suffer with them, in moral support. If you can help others who are in the same situation as us, our sisters, that would be really good.”

You can help the friends of Mamouna and Agnes who are still waiting for a home to call their own. Building a two-room house, like Mamouna’s in the photo, costs circa €800/$1000. Here are some of the construction costs you can help to meet per house

If you want to help, simply send a donation in one of the ways outlined below and let us know it is to go towards building a new house in Burkina Faso.

To donate online, please click here

To donate via cheque, please send it to African Jesuit AIDS Network, P.O. Box 571, Sarit 00606 Nairobi, Kenya

To donate via bank transfer in euros, please use the following details

To donate via bank transfer in US dollars, please use the following details

In some countries, it is possible to make a tax-free donation by donating through our Jesuit partners. To find out more, please fill in and send us this form and we will be in touch with you with more details.

Thank you!