When 20-year-old Namara Vivian was a child, she never smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born HIV-positive, Vivian also lost her father when she was young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want anyone to talk to me, because I thought I was alone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So her grandmother started caring for the young Vivian and her mother, eventually taking them to Reach Out Mbuya Parish HIV\/AIDS Initiative to receive their antiretroviral drugs. The NGO also started paying school fees for the girl and her siblings, and when Vivian was an adolescent, she completed a ROM vocational training in hairdressing. Now, the young woman has a job as a hairdresser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cReach Out is the reason I can smile right now,\u201d Vivian said. \u201cAt Reach Out, when they came to visit me in the hospital, they told me \u2018you\u2019re not alone \u2013 we\u2019re all in this together.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m an example for the little ones [who are HIV-positive]. They all say \u2018I want to be like Vivian; she\u2019s so happy, despite the positivity in her,’\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vivian shared her story on 14th<\/sup> November 2016 at the Reach Out site at Our Lady of Africa Church in Mbuya. Despite the rainy morning, applauding enthusiastically before her was a delegation from across the world: seven Chinese citizens representing the Chinese community living in Kampala, Uganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chinese visitors, part of the Zhejiang Chinese Association of Uganda and the Chinese Embassy in Kampala, had come to make a generous donation to Reach Out Mbuya: 10 million UGX to support orphans in school whose parents had died due to AIDS. About six orphans could be supported in one year of primary school with the Chinese donation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The group had come across Reach Out Mbuya through a Ugandan friend, Simon Lokodo \u2013 who happens to be the State Minister of Ethics and Integrity in the Cabinet of Uganda. Lokodo is also a parishioner of Our Lady of Africa Mbuya Church, which, alongside Reach Out Mbuya, organized a 6-km charity run in honor of World AIDS Day this 3rd<\/sup> December. All proceeds from the run went toward sustaining HIV-affected orphans and vulnerable children in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n