One of my favorite weekend activities is volunteering at Freedom Foundation, an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS. Tyler and I started volunteering here about a year and a half ago, after being introduced to it from some friends at Google.
Freedom Foundation was never meant to be an orphanage... the location, in Bolerum, Secunderabad, opened as an HIV/AIDS Center in 2001, providing care and anti-retroviral treatment to women with AIDS. However, the stigma against AIDS is so severe here in India, that if the woman died, no one would take care of her children.
(Or a more mild interpretation: remaining family members didn't have the resources and/or will to take care of the remaining children. One heartbreaking story: one 15-year old girl has 4 older brothers, all in IT and earning good wages -- but unwilling to support her because she has AIDS).
Thus Freedom Foundation as an orphanage was born. There are 28 children, aged 5 - 16. People ask what Tyler and I do there; the answer is simple: just play!! One of my favorites was when the Center hired a Bollywood dance instructor to teach the kids. Cricket and tag are good stand-bys as well.
Last year, Tyler and I taught them "duck duck goose." A few weeks later, a co-worker volunteered at the Center, and as soon as they associated her with us, the kids yelled: "duck duck goose!!!" I was feeling quite proud of us...until she informed me that perhaps the learning didn't quite stick: instead of running around the circle just once, they went around three to five times!
Some pics of our last visit, earlier this month:
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