• About Us
• Contact Us
• What's New

HIV/AIDS Ministry

Since January 2003 St. Brendan Church has been sponsoring AIDS programs at a Catholic hospital in Malawi as part of the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA). The hospital is run by a remarkable nun named Sr. Brigida. It is important to note that one quarter of all people suffering from AIDS worldwide are under the direct care of the Catholic Church.

Our connection with GAIA directly connects us with the realities of life and the struggle for its preservation in Malawi. All of us at St. Brendan's are living the Eucharistic message through our commitment to Sister and her work with the dying. If you want more information or want to make a contribution contact Jane Paulson at paulson@pacbell.net.

Each year at St. Brendan we mark World AIDS Day with a collection to support the Catholic response to AIDS in Malawi through GAIA. Typically, our collection supports a clinic's activities for the entire year. We also participate in other activities to address the worldwide AIDS pandemic here and abroad.

The situation in Malawi

William Rankin, an Episcopal priest, is the President of Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), based in San Francisco. GAIA has been at work in Malawi since 2001 on a variety of village-level HIV/AIDS prevention and care strategies, accessing rural areas through Christian and Muslim religious groups. Bill offers this reflection on the work we support in Malawi:

What's new this year [2006] is the discovery of Malawi by certain commentators -- perhaps because the country's poverty is appalling even by Africa's standards, so if you finally bother to look, the place stands out. Thus a New York Times op. ed. piece appeared in mid-December, blasting alleged Malawi government corruption, poor planning and coordination, and the opportunism of non-governmental organizations. And shortly thereafter came another op. ed. piece - this from a former Malawi Peace Corps Volunteer -- blistering the entertainer Bono, one of Time Magazine's newly named people of the year, who bothers himself to try to help.

It is difficult to find in these pieces encouragement to assist the desperate people who live in Malawi's villages -- except that some of us become all the more determined to do this. Nor are we ignorant of incompetence, governmental corruption, and greed-based opportunism in Africa as well as in the developed countries. I'd love to know which of the great white nations is innocent.

Such pessimistic statements, particularly when appearing in prominent media, may lead readers to infer that trying to help in Malawi is senseless. Of course one sees what one believes. But Gordon Radley, a former Malawi Peace Corps Volunteer and recent President of Lucasfilm Ltd, writes in response to these pieces: GAIA "with fewer than four staff people, supported by private donations and a grant from the Gates Foundation, working through Malawian counterpart NGOs, Christian and Muslim faith groups, and with Malawian village volunteers, has created a village model for the prevention and care of HIV/AIDS. This program has been working in 37 villages for several years and includes income generating activities that sustain the program, nurturing it to self-sufficiency. There are no international consulting fees, no expatriate housing costs, no staff Land Rovers."

And we continue to sustain people in villages throughout Malawi's center and south, with food, orphan care of various kinds, home-based care to the sick and dying, anti-stigma interventions, strategies for HIV counseling and testing, and connecting people to antiretroviral and other medical treatment programs.

My own concern about the well-written and presumably informed op. ed. articles is that so many of Malawi's people live on a very thin edge. Daily they struggle with terrible poverty, hunger, and disease, with extremely few resources and virtually no "safety net." The stakes for them are, to slightly bend Bunyan's phrase, "strictly infinite." And so an outside commentator publishing words with the potential to diminish external help may be playing with the very lives of innocent people. Further endangering the lives of Malawi people seems to me not worth the satisfaction of whatever may motivate some op.ed. columnists to critique the relief efforts.

Simone Weil counseled us that the way to get through life as decent and caring human beings is to attend to the good. This is different from sentimentality or escapism since it is premised upon a clear-sighted recognition of reality and a willingness to assume personal responsibility. It means keeping before us images that are all too familiar in Malawi: a brave young mother dying of AIDS-related illnesses, or an 8-year old orphan struggling to survive, while keeping his younger siblings alive as well.

It means taking full account of what Neely Tucker saw when he looked at the orphans of Kenya: "They withered and died like flowers in the field. It is difficult to express the sorrow of such a thing."

And it means taking hope from the great Nigerian poet Ben Okri, in whose "African Elegy" is this account of what he hears from the singing of Africa's dead:

And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder here

And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.

Those of us who work on the ground in Malawi are able to assist some of the poorest, most patient and bravest people on earth with your help. We are very grateful.

Facts about Malawi

At a glance

• Location: Southern Central Africa
• Population: 12.3 million
• One of the 11 poorest countries in the world
• Average annual income $170
• Life expectancy 40 years
• Male adult literacy rate 74.5%, Female adult literacy rate 46.5%

HIV/AIDS in Malawi

• 900,000 women, men, and children infected with HIV (950,000 in the USA)
• 51% of infected adults are women
• 84,000 deaths due to AIDS (14,000 in the USA)
• 500,000 children orphaned
• Free treatment with anti-retroviral drugs available to only a few thousand

GAIA's Response

We partner with developing country religious and interfaith groups to:

• Prevent HIV
• Provide care to people ill with AIDS
• Develop women leadership in the struggle against HIV
• Provide care for orphans
• Break down stigma and denial

How you can help

• $5 pays for an orphan school supplies
• $100 pays for yearly secondary school fees for an orphaned child
• $500 buys enough food and medicine for 60 orphans for 5 months
• $1,000 buys five bicycle ambulances for transporting patients
• $5,000 supports a project providing food, life skills training, and care to 270 people living with HIV/AIDS for a year

GAIA Annual Report

The GAIA Annual report is available for download.

• GAIA 2005 Annual Report
  (680 K PDF File)