The Village of Hope was born with the aim to welcome, accommodate and provide shelter for orphans affected by HIV.

The children who arrive to the Village are orphans of their mother, father or both; some of them have been abandoned by their family or tribes because of the disease; all of them share the same faith of been infected by the HIV virus.

Our children arrive to the Village often under considerable strain, undernourished and some with evident signs of the disease.

When they get to the Village of Hope, children are often exhausted: sick, undernourished and some of them with the evident signs of the disease already. Some children contracted the virus at birth from an HIV-positive mother, others were infected due to physical violence.

For these reasons the first therapy to which children that arrive at the VHO are subjected is love, care and acceptance.

The children are housed in 12 family houses, located in the center of the village. Each house hosts about 12 children and a couple of voluntary foster parents as well as a nurse who take care of them: it is an attempt to reconstitute a family environment.

At the moment there are 160 children at the Village of Hope, and they are from a few months to around 18 years old: they are cared for and looked after at a medical, psychological and spiritual level, so that they can live the days of their lives in serenity.

The dispensary is a separate facility that accommodates children who have just arrived at the Village. Here they are visited and the first treatments are administered: many children in fact arrive at the Village in very serious health conditions, often undernourished and with a high hiv viral load. It is therefore necessary to treat them, cuddle them and feed them so that they can recover their strength, before they can join the families and the community with their new brothers and sisters.

In March 2019 the dispensary housed 12 children. Irvin, the youngest, is only a few days old.