Features:

Study guide

This special series focuses on the spread of AIDS through the African continent. The articles examine the scope of the pandemic and what Lutherans are doing to help those communities afflicted by the disease.

AIDS in Africa
(PDF download)

Finding food at school

At a Lutheran-supported school in a Nairobi shantytown, first-graders serve a meal of porridge, made from grain donated for the school's 700 students.

Many children won't come to school unless they are fed, spending those learning hours instead scrounging or working for food, says Patricia O'Meara, one of the Sisters of Mercy who run the school. "For many of our students, this is the only meal of the day," she says. Nearly every week a child's parent dies from AIDS.

With ELCA World Hunger Appeal funds sent through Lutheran World Relief, the Sisters of Mercy run four schools serving 4,000 children, a home for 120 abandoned children and AIDS orphans, and an informal school for street children.