young positives empowered to adhere
Who is ypea?
Young Positives Empowered to Adhere (YPEA) is an association of children in the Primary School setting who are living with HIV and AIDS, based in Kyarusozi Town Council schools, in the Kyenjojo District. Their mission is to bring together children living with HIV and AIDS in Kyarusozi Town Council Primary Schools for information sharing on positive living practices.
YPEA began after a student at Kyarusozi Primary School passed away. In November 2015, this student gave up hope for his life and secretly stopped taking his antiviral medication to suppress the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in his body. His death shocked the students and teachers of Kyarusozi Primary. Florence, the Deputy Teacher, and Bruce, a Primary Seven level teacher, knew they had to do something for the children of their school with HIV. These students suffer tremendously from inadequate nutrition, social stigma, and poverty of hope. Florence and Bruce began the ministry, YPEA, where they visit with each of the students with HIV to counsel them.
YPEA’s vision is to bring hope back into the lives of children with HIV, and their families. Here in Kyarusozi, and probably in many other villages, if you say someone is “living positively” it is understood that person has HIV. YPEA would like the term “living positively” to have a new meaning: to live the Gospel Jesus shares with us, especially Matthew 22: 37, 39: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Let Us Move Mountains joined YPEA in September 2016 and continues to be a part of their ministry. Through living this Gospel, providing aid for basic needs, developing projects for future growth, and being a source of friendship to these children and their families, we hope to empower them to live positively and to help others, those with HIV and those without, to live positively as well.
Sustainability Projects
Part of the mission of Let Us Move Mountains is to help organizations and schools become self sustainable. We provide relief in the form of income generating projects and donations, while at the same time building up the assets of these organizations and schools so they can one day run without outside aid.
In 2017 we began the Kihara Farm project to generate an income for Young Positives Empowered to Adhere. We also use the farm land to train families in Farming God’s Way. “Farming God’s Way is a Godly solution to the food security and poverty for the rural poor. It is a tool of equipping to empower the poor to help themselves. It consists of Biblical keys, management skills and agricultural techniques and has a proven track record since 1984.” – from www.farming-gods-way.org
Every year Farming God’s Way (FGW) holds a training in Uganda’s capitol. Let Us Move Mountains sends five to six local farmers to be trained, then expects them to come back and implement this technique/tool on their own land. One of two of the farmers will be asked/equipped to train twenty families on the farm.
