Burundi – Service Yezu Mwiza: a hope for people affected by HIV
Some children received educational kits and school supplies from SYM
P. Védaste Nkeshimana SJ, Executive Director of Service Yezu Mwiza in Burundi, describes how care through solidarity is being implemented in a new project to promote the health and social inclusion of the poorest and most marginalized people living with HIV.
Service Yezu Mwiza (SYM), a social-health work of the Society of Jesus in the Rwanda-Burundi region, accompanies and supports people affected by HIV and AIDS orphans in Burundi. The words "Yezu Mwiza", which in Kirundi - the national language of Burundi - means "sweet Jesus", indicate the sweetness and goodness with which the organization carries out its activities. It is inspired by the Gospel and aims to promote social justice with a preferential option for the poorest. At the end of December 2020, there were 1,053 people living with HIV under the care of Yezu Mwiza Service. In addition to people with AIDS, the organization also assists 3,612 orphans and vulnerable children whose parents or family members are affected by HIV.
SYM relies on the support of its technical and financial partners to carry out its activities of care and economic and psychosocial support. They are well aware that promoting the health of people in need is one of the best ways to enable them to participate in the creation of a world in which everyone can live well. It is in this perspective that SYM approached the MAGIS Foundation to ask it to support and finance the project: "Medical assistance and economic support for 1,053 people affected by HIV/AIDS in the rural province of Bujumbura in Burundi". In a context of health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to stay close to our beneficiaries. Taking care of vulnerable people, listening to their anguish and accompanying them in dark moments such as the current pandemic, has made us discover our inability to respond to all their needs. However, the best way to support them is to help them live a healthy life and provide them with the means to become autonomous and creators of their own development. The overall goal of the project is to provide medical care and economic support to people with AIDS. The specific objectives are:
- improve the quality of services offered to people living with HIV;
- to guarantee the availability of drugs for opportunistic infections;
- make laboratory reagents available for biological monitoring;
- make people with HIV economically independent through income-generating activities.
The initiative responds to the call made by Pope Francis during the celebration of the World Day of Peace on January 1, 2021, in which he invites communities and organizations to adhere to the principles of the Church's social doctrine as the basis for a culture of care through solidarity, and to express love for others as a "firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good: that is, to the good of all and of each one so that all are truly responsible for all" [cf. St. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter. Sollicitudo rei socialis (December 30, 1987), 38].
Likewise, the implementation of the project is in keeping with the Universal Apostolic Preferences of the Society of Jesus. In a context in which AIDS is associated with sexual promiscuity or marital infidelity, caring for people affected by HIV is a way of being close to those who feel excluded and hopeless. We must consider that almost all the beneficiaries of the project are poor people who, in most cases, have contracted the disease because of their vulnerable situation linked to poverty. The initiative will help give them hope and dignity, improving their health status and allowing them to participate in development activities. In addition, the project will directly reach 125 orphans and vulnerable minors, who will be provided with school kits, and indirectly other minors, who will benefit from the support of their families. Service Yezu Mwiza cares a lot about this kind of interventions that promise a better future to the less fortunate youth of our country.
The joint action of SYM and the MAGIS Foundation, aimed at providing medical care, accompaniment and economic support to 1,053 people with AIDS, is a unique opportunity and experience to see the person with HIV "not as a statistic, or a means to be exploited and then discarded when no longer useful, but as our neighbor, fellow traveler, called to participate, on a par with us, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God," as Pope Francis reminds us in the aforementioned message "The Culture of Care as a Path to Peace."
On behalf of Yezu Mwiza Service and its beneficiaries, I would like to express my gratitude to all our benefactors and to MAGIS Foundation in particular, because it is thanks to your support that we can all participate in improving the living conditions of the needy people God has placed in our path.
By Védaste Nkeshimana, SJ - Executive Director of Yezu
Mwiza Service
Source: MAGIS
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