MONTEGO BAY, St James – Twenty-one orphans, whose parents have died from the deadly HIV/AIDS disease, are to receive back-to-school supplies valued at more than $100,000 from the National AIDS Committee (NAC).

“The money will go toward the purchase of books, uniforms or to pay tuition fees,” said NAC liaison officer Newton Wynter on Wednesday.

The money, he added, will be disbursed through the Parish AIDS Associations (PAA), the local outreach arm of the NAC, which works closely with families affected by HIV/AIDs and orphaned or vulnerable children.

“We are helping two children in each parish and a maximum of 10 in Kingston and St Andrew,” Wynter said. The money for the programme, he said, was provided through funds donated some time ago by the now defunct Foundation for Children.

PAA chairman for Kingston and St Andrew Kereen Thompson said the organisation was focused on identifying the most vulnerable children for the financial assistance. These children, she said, were normally cared for by relatives in cases where the parents had passed on or were too sick to care for them.

“Most of the applications that we sent in were for orphans and vulnerable children where the grandmother or the auntie were the caregivers and guardians in cases where the parents are no longer alive,” said Thompson.

She said that children living under these circumstances and their caregivers had a difficult time coping. “Usually it’s a case where the aunt or the grandmother is just granting a favour for the child,” she said. “Under these circumstances financial problems lead to frustration, where they might not be motivated to go the extra mile, seeing that it’s not their child but somebody else’s,” said Thompson.

Other PAA co-ordinators reported that some children who lost their parents because of HIV/AIDS were living in poor conditions.

One co-ordinator reported that one of the two children who received the NAC’s assistance lived under trying circumstances. The eight-year-old girl, she said, had lived in a leaking one-room house with four other siblings before the family got assistance from Food for the Poor to build a two-room house.

In another instance, a teenage girl who received assistance had “suffered severe humiliation” and even physical abuse at the hands of other children at her school.

Under these circumstances, emotional and financial assistance goes a long way to help these children and their relatives cope with the realities of their lives, according to one parish PAA chairman.

The PAA is a fully voluntary organisation and Wynter said members were active in most parishes, except in Hanover and St Thomas, where the associations were dormant.

“Right now we need volunteers,” Wynter told the Observer. “Voluntary work is something that is not really catching on,” he said.