The Amani Family Leadership Trip - June 2008

Each year, the Amani Children's Foundation does some sort of trip to Kenya during the summer. The themes vary. Some years the focus is on students, sometimes adults, sometimes doctors, sometimes family. This year, it's about family.

Over 13 million children in Africa have lost one or both parents to the HIV epidemic. That number is expected to double within the next decade. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is producing orphans so quickly that family structures can no longer cope. They are being found in garbage dumps, on hospital steps, and at bus stops across the continent.

Our 14-day visit/seminar/service tirip will examine the issues of AIDS in AFrica and the effects of this pandemic on infants and children. The trip is intended to begin the long-term process of bringing together the best imagination and resources of America and the best leadership in Africa. Together with Kenyan partners, we will brainstorm, converse, and draw on our professional skills and personal experience to further the work being done on behalf of infants and children whoe have been orphaned by AIDS.

This trip was designed around 6 core objectives:

1. To develop a core of American leaders able to speak from first-hand experience about the crisis of AIDS in Africa in order to make sustainable advances in caring for orphaned infants and children

2. To work with the staff of New Life Homes in caring for abandoned children

3. To meet with other young people and leaders in Kenya involved in the work of caring for orphaned children and protecting their rights

4. To study best practice approaches to the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time

5. To bring the best and brightest minds of the next generation both from the US and from Kenya to develop long-term relationships and big picture thinking about the future of the children of Africa and the ways every discipline and segment of the US and Kenya can affect that future

6. To deepen intergenerational relationships, both here and in Africa

Trip dates: June 20 - July 3