AKCLI is working with network partners to establish model "Villages of Hope" in Zambia, to provide care and spiritual development for AIDS orphans, with the objective to provide care for millions. AKCLI partners have over 28 years experience implementing successful Christ-centered programs in Africa. These include medical clinics, schools, orphan villages, and vocational training programs in Zambia, Namibia, and Ghana. Other network partners are providing orphans’ services in South Africa and the Central African Republic.

Infrastructure
The Villages of Hope are designed upon the African village concept, the keystone of traditional African culture. The Villages are being established on large productive farms. Each will incorporate economical housing for children, large irrigated food gardens, areas for raising livestock, pastures, as well as recreational and school facilities. A village will house 40 to 50 children; eight to ten children will live in a family-style individual home with two house parents. Each village is designed to be self-sufficient. Partners Worldwide is providing successful North American agricultural business people who are working with the Zambia Agricultural Research Center - the Golden Valley Agricultural Research Trust (GART) and the Zambian National Farmers’ Union to develop the agricultural development plan for each site. Together they will determine the livestock needed, the acreage under cultivation, the irrigation plan, and the crops needed to enable each village to be self-sustaining. The children will be raised in this farm environment. The AKCLI-related children's village in Namibia has found a daily farm schedule to be extremely healing for the children who have experienced so many traumas in their young lives: many were the caregivers for their dying parents, some were actually child slaves, many struggled to survive on their own in the African bush. In Namibia, at 6:15 a.m. the children go to the barn, milk the goats, groom the goats, groom the horses, feed the chickens, collect the eggs, and weed the gardens. They go in for breakfast at 7:00 a.m., and their school day begins. The children have found tremendous security in having a daily, regular, productive routine.

Four villages will make up a cluster containing 160 to 200 orphans. A missionary couple will lead each cluster. Critical support needs of health, education, vocational training, and spiritual development will be provided as central, common resources. Each cluster will consist of approximately twenty acres. Each cluster will have a large building for common use, a large irrigated garden of several acres, area for raising livestock, pastures, and athletic play space. This model is designed to be replicated throughout sub-Saharan Africa, in order to save and to rescue tens of thousands of children to be creative Christian citizens of their own countries.
more