HISG : Orphans and Vulnerable Children Initiatives

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Orphans and Vulnerable Children Initiative

Through its variety of humanitarian efforts around the globe, Humanitarian International Services Group has repeatedly witnessed glimpses of the horrifying reality of 143 million orphans and millions more children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, conflict, poverty, socio-political conditions, and disease. Recognizing the unique needs of this population, HISG is working on developing programs and partnering with organizations to respond specifically to the distinct situations faced by these children.

Dr. Brad Davidson - Director for Orphan Care

Brad Davidson is leading HISG's Orphan and Vulnerable Children initiative. He practices medicine at the Lebanon VA Medical Center in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where he serves as the medical director of the Home Based Primary Care program, a collaborator for the introduction for the Care Coordination and Telehealth program, and the POW medical examiner. He also researched, proposed and introduced the current pulmonary rehabilitation program at the hospital.

Brad and his wife, Jo are high school sweethearts and the parents of four biological and two adopted children. They became increasingly involved in adoption and orphan care following several medical trips to China and their first adoption in 2003. Since then, he has worked with and sits on the boards of several adoption agencies and humanitarian organizations to promote adoption awareness and global orphan care.

Orphaned and Alienated

What sort of program should be implemented in the absence of an intact family, an unreceptive or even antagonistic community, and when long term foster care and adoption are either not possible or unlikely? This situation is perhaps best exemplified by the estimated 12 million AIDS orphans in Africa today. (UNAID/WHO, July 2008) The AIDS virus steals their education and their childhood as they care for their ailing and dying parents and assume the adult roles of taking care of their younger siblings, and ultimately it steals their parents. It wreaks havoc on their security and emotional well being. The usually strong social safety net built into many African communities to care for children of others has been stretched and ripped apart in many areas due to the disease.

Infected or not, the orphans of AIDS are stigmatized and alienated from their families and communities. They are often shunned by their extended family and neighbors, and left alone to fend for themselves with little chance of being adopted or fostered. The sentiment is not much better among Westerners, who, until very recently considered HIV to be a “deserved disease” brought about by homosexual and promiscuous behavior. In a 2001 World Vision survey conducted by the Barna Group, only 8% of Americans responded that they would donate money to help children affected by AIDS. What we fail to understand is that in Africa, the fastest growing cohorts for new HIV infection are married women, who contract the disease from their husbands, and young children, to whom the virus is “vertically transmitted” through childbirth or breastfeeding—both of them passive, innocent victims of the disease.

Brad Davidson has developed a model intended to replicate family as closely as possible, doing so in a self-sustaining, holistic and culturally relevant manor. This scenario should not be viewed as an alternative to adoption, or stable foster care. It is, in that sense, a last resort, but we feel it is far more wholesome than a traditional orphanage. Click here to read HISG's model of an "ideal" orphan care program.