The Family Spirit Child Care Centre where we work, in the town of Misandi, Uganda was founded with a clear and essential vision: a world where children are free from suffering. Founded in 2002 by a group of people living with HIV/AIDS, we provide a home to vulnerable young people, often orphans, affected by war, violence or those living with HIV.
Our centre currently cares for close to 200 children, offering them vital shelter, community and education that helps them build the foundations needed to live long and fulfilled lives.
This year, to mark World AIDS Day, we will be hosting a community event bringing together children from the centre with others from across the region. As well as providing food and a variety of activities based around the day’s theme of ending inequalities in access to HIV care, the day will see the sharing of poems, short plays and other presentations teaching people about HIV prevention and awareness.
As well as events like this one, there is another tool we have been using in our mission to engage young people in HIV education: cricket.
For the last few years, we’ve been working closely with charity Cricket Without Boundaries in collaboration with the Uganda Cricket Association to develop a programme of regular coaching alongside cricket festival days designed to combat HIV stigma and provide lessons around preventing, testing and managing the virus.
The ways that Cricket Without Boundaries has helped us to deliver these lessons are ingenious.
From bowling games where children try and knock down signs displaying myths around HIV and how it can be transmitted, to games that demonstrate how you can protect yourself from the virus being compared to the way you can protect your stumps while batting, Cricket Without Boundaries has enabled us to educate children in unexpected and entertaining ways.
Alongside education, these festivals and game-days have helped bring about significant progress in terms of breaking down HIV misconceptions.
HIV positive people in our region have been deeply stigmatised, with some children being turned away from other schools for being HIV positive, not permitted to socialise with children who were HIV negative or even having teachers refuse to mark their school workbooks for misplaced fear of contracting the virus.
Thankfully, that is changing. Now, local schools come together with us for cricket training days and play freely, which brings with it a huge opportunity to break down barriers that existed previously.
More than that, these events are providing a platform for crucial healthcare interventions.
Two young boys who attended one of our cricket festivals received HIV tests while there, with both returning a positive diagnosis. Both boys are now getting life-saving treatment they might otherwise have gone without had it not been for testing made available at the game-day.
The impact of this work is clear. We are so proud and grateful for our partnership with Cricket Without Boundaries and our children – equally boys and girls – now love playing cricket, with training sessions taking place up to three times a week.
Before, the children were seen as not wanted by the community, but by using cricket to share better health practices and build relationships with the local community, our children are finding happiness again.
Lee Booth and Sara Begg from Cricket Without Boundaries say:
Using cricket as a tool for social good in East Africa has been a cornerstone of Cricket Without Boundaries’ work and, looking to the future, we are putting in place long-term plans with the Uganda Cricket Association to support similar initiatives and coaching in the region, supported by funding from the MCC Foundation.
Cricket is a game for everybody. Not only is the game helping share vital healthcare messaging among vulnerable communities, but it is also teaching new skills to young people and forging new pathways for people to enter cricket and, we hope, reach elite level.
We hope the work of Family Spirit, Cricket Without Boundaries and the Uganda Cricket Association can show an example for the rest of the world in terms of the approach to supporting HIV positive people – finding a unique way to challenge stigma and educate about HIV prevention – both essential steps in the journey towards a world with zero new transmissions of the virus.
For more information about World AIDS Day, please visit https://www.worldaidsday.org/
For more information about the Family Spirit Child Care Centre, please visit http://www.familyspiritchildcarecentre.org/
For more information about the work of Cricket Without Boundaries, please visit https://www.cricketwithoutboundaries.com/