Food insecurity is prevalent in families where one or more parents are infected with HIV/AIDS and in households that ultimately take in orphans left by AIDS – according to UNAIDS/UNICEF, food consumption can drop by 40%. In households where parents are unable to work due to illness, a decrease in income affects access to secure food availability. Parents are unable to work in the fields and harvest their crops, decreasing their food and income sources. AIDS orphans taken in by other households face limited resources, including a limited ability to get their nutritional needs met.

OSA partners with Feed the Children (FTC) and UNICEF to provide regular, nutritious meals for OVC in communities across Malawi. FTC provides communities with Vitameal, a specially formulated, vitamin-rich food that is eaten as, or mixed with, porridge for young OVC. UNICEF provides much needed farm inputs to communities lacking adequate resources for sustainable farms. OSA is involved in those partnerships by mobilizing and training the community in order that they use the resources most effectively.

By working with community-based childcare centers (CBCCs) within an existing CBO we are able to increase the OVC’s accessibility of Vitameal and farm inputs. Tiwalere, a USAID-funded alliance of OSA, FTC, World Relief, and Total Land Care is an example of such initiative, which has improved OVC care with delivery of Vitameal and farm inputs to those CBCCs. Since the beginning of the Vitameal program in December of 2009, there has been a 33% increase in CBCC attendance. And in 2010, over 13,000 OVC were fed throughout 33 OSA-partnered CBOs through the Vitameal program.

In addition to these partnerships, OSA continues to promote nutritionally-balanced meals through our Income Generating Activities projects. Grants from OSA fund income generating activities (IGAs), which are developed based on the community’s innate resources. These IGAs, such as piggeries and maize mills, provide food output and supplemental income to support, among other things, balanced meals for OVC.

OSA is continuing our partnership with Feed the Children and UNICEF to maximize each community’s capacity to produce sustainable OVC care, where comprehensive care is replicated and nutritional programs are sustained. OSA continues to work towards mobilizing communities to effectively utilize resources that support OVC, nurturing self-reliance and ultimately, effecting community empowerment.