Agoyi erokamano: "I give you thanks."

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These were the sincere closing words of a letter from Scott S. Lee, a Harvard University medical student, expressing gratitude about the work made possible through the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund. Because of UMC gifts to this fund, St. Paul’s Methodist Health Center in Ugunja, a rural community in Kenya, has provided comprehensive treatment and care to over 300 HIV/AIDS patients for the past year.

St. Paul’s began as a home-grown clinic in 2005, established by a group of people from the Ugunja village who lived alongside the patients they served. In a few short months a new building was constructed and community outreach programs began. In September 2005, a large Kenyan AIDS organization, impressed with the clinic’s grassroots efforts, offered to fund the creation of an HIV treatment program with promises of continual support.

With this assurance, St Paul’s hired staff and conducted a series of community awareness meetings about the new HIV treatment program. People came to the clinic to be tested and in just one month, 140 HIV-positive individuals had enrolled and were excited about receiving new treatment.

Hope Deferred

Two months after the program was underway, citing an unanticipated budgetary shortfall, the large AIDS organization abruptly rescinded its promise of continued support, even as the number of people requiring HIV treatment at St. Paul’s continued to grow. Borrowed money from creditors and personal appeals kept St. Paul’s afloat for a while, but soon the clinic was deep in debt and on the verge of collapse. Building repairs were neglected, medicine supplies were depleted and the staff who worked tirelessly without pay, now had their own livelihoods to worry about.

United Methodists Respond

With promises unfulfilled, in August 2006, a group of Harvard students with ties to Kenya—including Scott Lee, who had previously spent five summers working with the Ugunja community—banded together to undertake a desperate fundraising drive in an effort to save St. Paul’s. One of their first appeals was to the UM Global AIDS Fund.

“You responded! You responded! Thanks to you, St. Paul’s Health Center has been saved, and more importantly, human lives have been saved,” said Scott Lee.

One year after the UM Global AIDS Fund began providing support to St. Paul’s, the health center is now thriving. Your gifts to the UM Global AIDS Fund have enabled St. Paul’s to provide ongoing support to more than 300 HIV-positive adults and children in Ugunja, Kenya. This support includes antiretroviral therapy, treatment of opportunistic infections, nutritional support, micro-loans and agricultural training—all provided, thanks to the UM Global AIDS Fund, free-of-charge and, thanks to the energy and vision of the St. Paul’s staff, in an entirely community-based and community-driven manner.

Looking ahead, St. Paul’s Methodist Health Center is eager to strengthen and expand its HIV support program, as well as its broader portfolio of medical and social support services to the community. For example, St. Paul’s has recently completed construction of a new Maternal and Child Health ward—critically needed in a region where most mothers still give birth at home. With the new MCH ward, St. Paul’s can begin to provide lifesaving preventive therapy so that HIV-positive mothers need not pass on the deadly virus to their children. In this way, UM Global AIDS Fund is enabling Kenyan mothers to experience as joy rather than as perilous risk, one of God’s most precious and mysterious gifts: the gift of new life.

Continue to support ground-breaking programs like St. Paul’s Methodist Health Center by giving to the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund, UMCOR Advance # 982345.