Background

When John and Kathy Tucker came to Cambodia in January of 2000, Cambodia had the highest rate of HIV/AIDS incidence in Asia. After attending language school, John and Kathy began working with adults who had HIV/AIDS in the Maryknoll "Seedling of Hope" project. It soon became clear that there was no program in Cambodia for the special needs of children with HIV/AIDS and there was no orphanage that would accept children who had HIV/AIDS.

In March of 2001, a program was started to provide home based care to children living with HIV/AIDS. This program , called "Little Sprouts", visited children in Phnom Penh Cambodia who were living with their extended families after the death of their parents due to HIV/AIDS. Trained field workers visited these children three times a week and provided food support and basic medicines. Books, uniforms and school fees were also provided for those children healthy enough to attend school. In January of 2006, this program was visiting 240 children living with extended families.

By August of 2001, it was clear that some members of the extended families of parents who had died of HIV/AIDS were too sick, too poor, too old or too afraid to care for the children with HIV/AIDS. The program opened a group home for children whose extended families were unknown or unwilling to care for the children. In January of 2006, there were 8 group homes caring for 160 children.

In February of 2002, the program decided to raise the necessary funds to provide the life saving antiretroviral (ARV) medicine for the children. E-Mail letters were sent to churches in the United States asking each church to sponsor a child for the life saving medicine. Parishes were asked to sponsor a child for $45/month. This covered the cost of the medicine ($23/mo), the cost of blood test ($13/mo) and the cost of delivering the medicine twice a day to each child ($10/mo). The response was dramatic and in June of 2002 the first child received the ARV medicine. This was the first program to provide ARV medicine to children in Cambodia. By March of 2006, 288 children were receiving this life saving medicine.

In December of 2005, The Clinton Foundation donated to the program   ARV medicine for all the children. The Clinton Foundation also assisted the Cambodian Ministry of Health in equipping the laboratory at the National Institute of Public Health. This resulted in a dramatic reduction of the costs of blood test .Because of these cost savings, the sponsorship program has been reduced from $45/mo to $20/mo per child. Many parishes that were supporting one child are now able to support two children.