But What About the Children?

I just finished reading Melissa Fay Greene's book There is No Me Without You, which you can find in the library's reading room (call number GRE). I'd highly recommend it. We've all heard about the victims of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, but this book puts faces and names on some of the real people behind the statistics and political rhetoric. Hearing that 13 million children are orphaned somehow means more when you read about a five-year old girl reduced to living alone in an alley behind the restaurant where her mother used to work. After mom died of AIDS, the orphaned child subsisted on scraps given her by the restaurant workers--but no one took her in. The scope of the problem is really hard for us to grasp; but we need to try. This book helps--and provides a useful (if select) list of organizations through which we can reach out.