Aids Orphans Skills Centers, Inc
________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
3
Introduction
Mozambique is a country with natural beauty, friendly people, and great potential
to become a bread basket of Southern Africa. In recent years the country has experienced
outstanding economic growth, having one of the highest growth rates in Africa, and in the
world. However, the GNP of Mozambique still remains at $210.00 per year.
Despite the economic achievement, Mozambique is still one of the poorest
countries in the world. The current life expectancy in Mozambique is 35 years old, and
the future of the country is uncertain as the country continues to be assailed with many
different diseases such as Malaria, Tuberculosis, leprosy, and AIDS. There is only one
doctor for every 24,000 patients in Mozambique. It is a country with 18.6 million people
and 800 doctors. Of those doctors more than 600 are in the capital city of Maputo in the
southernmost corner of the country.
Disease has brought a gloomy future to Mozambique as well as to other Sub-
Saharan Africa countries. For instance, every 30 seconds a child dies of Malaria in one of
the Sub-Saharan Africa countries. On the other hand, the death toll by AIDS is increasing
every year, and a whole generation of parents is vanishing, leaving behind the so called
“Lost Generation”. The “Lost Generation” is the children who have lost their parents, and
are being raised by elderly relatives, mainly grandparents.
Those elderly relatives do not have the time, education, or the energy to teach the
children about life survival and skills. They, themselves, are burdened by years of
subsistent living, and they are unprepared to teach the “Lost Generation”, since they
never had any kind of formal education themselves. The average 25 year old in
Mozambique has 2.1 years of formal education.
Thus, Aids Orphans Skills Centers Inc, whose name in Mozambique is TIOS,
(which stands for International Training for Orphans and their Survival), is committed to
tackling the problem by empowering orphans through the teaching of Survival Training
Skills and producing health safety education materials like anatomical dolls and posters
 |
 |
 |