The World Vision Experience: AIDS

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Media contacts Gardi Wilks | 708.205.5020 (c)

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The World Vision Experience: AIDS allows the American public to step through a window into the lives of actual children affected by HIV and AIDS in the hardest-hit region of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa. Visitors to the interactive exhibit listen to a personal audio track relating the story of a real child whose life has been affected by AIDS, as they walk through a replica of an African village and experience the effects of the pandemic in a personal way.

The World Vision Experience: AIDS Tour

Exhibit focuses on children

The stories profiled in the two exhibits are inspired by true events of real children. The children (whose real names are used by permission) are:

Kombo: Big trucks — and the “Big Disease” — roll past one boy’s home at a Kenyan truck stop along the AIDS Highway. Babirye: In the epicenter of AIDS in Africa, a young Ugandan girl watches her father die and her mother grow weak — and wonders if she’ll be next. Emmanuel: A young boy and his brother must survive in the wild, caring for themselves after losing their mother and their home in Uganda. Mathabo: One girl feels the sting of abandonment as she faces hunger, assault, and disease — alone in the highlands of Lesotho.

Kombo is one of four children whose story is told through the Experience.

Touring the U.S

Approximately 4,000 to 5,000 visitors are expected to tour the Experience in each city during a typical eight-day schedule. See tour schedule here.

The stories profiled in the two new exhibits are inspired by true events of real children.

World Vision’s response to the pandemic in Africa

World Vision is working to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS through innovative and compassionate care, prevention efforts and effective advocacy.

• Some 519,000 children received values-based HIV-prevention training last year.
• An estimated 615,000 orphaned and vulnerable children and 42,000 chronically ill adults received care and assistance.
• Approximately 12,000 church leaders from 7,000 congregations were mobilized to respond to the crisis.
  
  

  Additional resources for journalists

  The World Vision Experience: AIDS Web site Experience factsheet HIV and AIDS factsheet Radio Spots 30 second spot 60 second spot