Greetings to you from Southern Africa! 

I serve as technical advisor with The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF), headquartered in Santa Monica.  EGPAF supports programs to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV as well as HIV related care and treatment for over half of Zambia's population.  My work covers a few strategic areas including improving the quality of counseling for HIV positive children, increasing the number of children on life-saving antiretroviral therapy and overseeing public health evaluations and operations research.  I am specifically interested in psychosocial support for HIV positive children.  I also serve on a WHO/UNICEF technical working group addressing HIV and nutrition for vulnerable children.  This August I am delighted to attend the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, where I have four papers accepted for presentation.
 

It is all too common, that when I lead workshops, nurses and counselors will share their own personal experiences of caring for child relatives orphaned because of AIDS.  Zambians who have employment are expected to be responsible for their extended family by ensuring care for sick relatives, taking in orphans and providing school fees.  No one is free from the burdens that AIDS has brought here.

Arden writes: I work alongside the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zambia. We have a new bishop from South Africa assigned here, named Bishop Manas Buthelezi.  A hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, it is an honor for me to work with him.  New work for me has included working with the leaders of the men's league, youth league, and the women's league, classic church structures which Africans love.  I am also advising the congregations in the northwest as they build their first large concrete & brick church.  (As a pastor, I had hoped to avoid building campaigns, but here I go) 
 

I am also supervising two pastoral interns out of seminary and guiding their theological research projects.  For example, Pastor Doreen Mwanza is researching the pastoral response to the cultural practice of sexual "cleansing" and negligible property inheritance for woman who become widows. 
 

Below is a photo from a January ordination, to which the church choirs came from near and far to celebrate.  Pastor Haabowa, my colleague, is here  dancing with the singers before the reading of the Gospel.
 

Our family has taken chosen to work together on one specific area.  We have recetly completed the building of a playground at a Christian school for 800 orphaned, disabled, and other children highly vulnerable to poverty.  It is a school feeding site for the UN World Food Program.  Time and space to play is essential for healthy child development and there exist painfully few such structures in the urban centres of Zambia.  Chloe led the design and coordination of this project in nearby Bauleni township.  Another play park is now being investigated.

The Lutheran Church is committed to building village self-reliance through micro-credit projects.  After the 2007 training was completed, Rev Chana and Arden reviewed all applications, and funds have been placed into the hands of Micro-Lending Clubs across the national church, for carrying out the following income generating projects:  
 

Carpentry of household items, farming of rice, corn, cassava, cotton, or potatoes, "roadside" informal hair salons, selling cellphone talktime cards, caterpillar collecting and selling, fish buying and selling (trading), goat/pig trading, growing and selling vegetables & groundnuts, buying and selling diesel fuel, small roadside grocery stores, knitting clothes, growing and selling chickens, selling baked goods, making charcoal & selling it in town. 
 

We oversee two field workers for monitoring and support of the lending clubs.  One story worth recounting is how field worker David Mangenda damaged his motorcycle visiting one congregation for micro-credit follow up.  He accidentally ran over a rather thick snake in the forest path, which caused him to crash.  David is alright. We have since gotten the motorcycle repaired. 

The response has been better than we anticipated.  ELCA congregations have funded over 600 persons' projects.  Given the poverty, hunger and unemployment in Zambia, empowering individuals in small businesses is essential.  Enabling human agency is key to sustainable transformation of rural communities.  Of course there have been challenges along the way, and we are intentionally understanding and learning from them, even as we provide more training.   Those clubs which successfully manage their loan capital will be eligible for a 2^nd round of funding later this year.