TASO

So, I started work at the AIDS Support Organization today. There are 11 centers throughout Uganda. The Jinja center caters to 20,000 clients (7000 are active, meaning that they have come in in the past 3 months), who are HIV positive, and their families. Services that they offer include counseling (family counseling, testing counseling, treatment counseling, etc.), medical care (antiretroviral treatment, treatment of opportunistic infections and help with other medical problems), outreach clinics for clients that cannot easily travel to the center, a child play center for the families, paying for the education fees of at least one child in a client’s household, skills training so that the client can remain employed, aromatherapy to treat medical problems, and family testing (so that clients won’t be tempted to share their antiretroviral drugs, which allows the virus to become much more difficult to treat). All of these services are free to the clients. They also have a food delivery program to their poorest clients, and they offer free condoms to everyone. We also met members of the traveling drumming group, which is a group of clients that prepare songs and skits about AIDS prevention and then travel to communities to educate them. On Tuesdays and Fridays, the center holds a therapy clinic for clients on antiretrovirals, and on Mondays and Thursdays they hold a general clinic to treat other medical problems that clients may have. On Wednesdays, counselors go on home visits to the clients. I think that what I’ll be doing is helping out in the clinic, possibly doing some work with kids, and working on their sustainable livelihood program. This program involves encouraging clients to become more involved in their own livelihoods, in ways that help both them and the community. From what I understand so far of the program, it does this through ways including providing loans to clients so that they can start their own businesses and offering training in skills so that they can get employed (at the center at Jinja, they have sewing machines that they train clients on). One example is that lunch at the center is offered for staff and clients at TASO every day for 1000 shillings (about 60 cents), it is prepared by the family of a client, so it helps both the family and the center. I’m still not sure specifically what I’ll be doing, but it definitely seems like a worthwhile project.