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World Vision challenges Chicago to respond to AIDS
By Jonathan Miller, Senior Writer
CHICAGO, April 1, 2003 -- Calling HIV/AIDS “the greatest weapon of mass destruction in the world today,” World Vision U.S. President Rich Stearns urged a gathering of more than 400 people in suburban Chicago to get involved in helping reverse the tide of the deadly pandemic.
If the United States and its allies can disarm Saddam Hussein, then “we can disarm the world of HIV/AIDS,” Stearns told a group of child sponsors and other World Vision supporters at a dinner in Oak Brook, Illinois. With news of war in Iraq commanding world attention these days, Stearns reminded the audience that HIV/AIDS is even more deadly, claiming 8,000 lives a day.
The dinner event was part of the first week of a 15-city “Hope Tour” in which World Vision seeks to demonstrate the urgency of addressing HIV/AIDS and to highlight its recent success in helping reduce infection rates in high-prevalence countries.
 Guests also heard Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, a noted author and Bible teacher, share how a recent life-transforming experience in Africa convinced him to step out of his comfort zone and begin a new career focused on teaching and communicating AIDS-prevention messages in Africa.
“Probably like you, I didn’t want to deal with this issue of AIDS, because I was thinking, ‘If they didn’t do what they did, they wouldn’t have it’,” said Wilkinson, author of “The Prayer of Jabez.” But as he met women and children who became infected with HIV through no fault of their own, he realized that the issue was not so simple.
A recurrent theme throughout the evening was a scripture passage from James 1:27, which states, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Justine Dominguez, a senior at Wheaton Academy, a Christian high school, mentioned the verse as she explained the motivation behind her school’s fundraising efforts in support of a World Vision school construction project in a rural area in Zambia. More Christians need to take heed of this biblical truth, she said.
World Vision’s primary efforts to date in combating HIV/AIDS have included:
- Prevention through education of children ages 5-15, pregnant and breast-feeding mothers, and high-risk groups
- Care for orphans and vulnerable children through the provision of counseling, food, health care, shelter, and education
- Advocacy to reduce the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS and to protect the rights of children and women infected or affected by HIV/AIDS
 As the evening wound down, Princess Kasune Zulu of Zambia shared her gratitude for involvement by World Vision in combating HIV/AIDS. Zulu, who together with her husband is HIV positive and has two healthy children, urgently desires for teenagers in her country to hear World Vision’s message of abstinence and fidelity.
“HIV/AIDS needs no passport to cross borders. It knows no color. It knows no gender,” said Zulu, who now works as an HIV/AIDS educator in Zambia for World Vision.
Because of involvement by organizations like World Vision, the incidence of HIV among teenagers has declined in countries like Uganda and Zambia, she said. |
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