Finding out you are HIV+ and coming to terms with that requires a lot of support, both from your medical team and family and friends. With myths, stigma and discrimination that still exists within the community it can be difficult to know who to trust, as Musamba, aged 22, found out:

The staff and board at Tiny Tim & Friends are committed to continuing our work and developing programs to support even more HIV+ children and adolescents live healthy, positive lives. Our donors and supporters have enabled TTF to pilot many new interventions over the years which have allowed us to change the lives of thousands of HIV+ individuals. WE CONTINUE TO NEED YOUR SUPPORT IN CHANGING LIVES. 

Adolescent girls are twice as likely to get infected with HIV as their male counterparts. And many adolescents do not feel empowered to access contraception, do not feel empowered to ask their partner to wear use condoms, or do not know where to access contraception from in order to protect themselves from infection. ​

When some of our adolescent peer mentors came to us recently to suggest setting up youth friendly services at the TTF Clinic, we were excited to hear about their ideas.  Our aim is to support them to develop a youth focused project which could not only help us in retaining our existing adolescent patients into treatment but in identifying new patients to reach out to and providing a safe space for young people to come and access information and services.  

The purpose of the youth friendly center would be to provide youth led HIV testing, counselling, sexual reproductive health information, access to condoms and referral services for those in need of HIV treatment, or other health and counselling services. ​ We would also run community based outreach services, led by our teen mentors and youth counselors, with the purpose of encouraging HIV testing in the community around the TTF Clinic and to encourage individuals to come to the clinic for testing and information services. 

Finally the youth groups want to establish chess clubs, sports teams and activity groups to provide a much needed distraction from some of the vices, such as alcohol and drug abuse,  which are too easily accessible to the vulnerable populations we work with. ​

We are more than confident that with the right funding, and guidance from the TTF management and social work teams our peer mentors can set up services which supports adolescents in: 

• Understanding the importance of treatment and taking medication.  
• Attending their appointments at the TTF Clinic.
• Accessing information on HIV, Sexual reproductive health, contraception, and counselling services.
• Accessing HIV testing in a youth friendly environment where they feel comfortable with their peers.  
• Breaking down some of the myths and stigma around HIV which prevents people from accessing testing. 
• Achieving viral suppression so if/ when they become sexually active their risk of transmission is reduced to zero.
• Finding a safe space where they can form sports teams, chess clubs or other groups to provide 

BUT WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT. IT WOULD COST US LESS THAN $7,000 TO ESTABLISH AND RUN OUR YOUTH FRIENDLY CENTER FOR 6 MONTHS, DURING WHICH TIME THE YOUTH WOULD LOOK TO UNDERTAKE FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES OF THEIR OWN IN LUSAKA TO SUPPORT THEIR CONTINUED OPERATIONS. PLEASE CONSIDER SUPPORTING OUR WORK BY DONATING TO TTF TODAY!(Please state the purpose of your donation on the donation page) 

Dr. Tim had such a great impact on the patients and people that we work with. So when one of our community volunteers gave birth to a little boy the day after Tim passed away last year, she decided to name her new born son Tim, to pay tribute to the work he had done to help her and others living with HIV to healthy lives and have healthy HIV negative children. 

In 2016 TTF ran a Crowd Funding campaign through Caring Crowd to support 50 of the most malnourished patients at Tiny Tim & Friends. Thanks to the support of 79 donors who came together to support our cause, and to Johnson & Johnson who matched every donation, we were successful in reaching our goal. 

So in early 2017 we spent time undertaking home visits, to understand the needs of our patients, and identifying those most in need of nutritional support. Finding 25 children and adolescents who were eligible was sadly not difficult. 

Many of the children were so malnourished and underweight they were suffering with opportunistic infections and alongside nutritional support also required supervised palliative care to help them get well. 

Supporting families with nutritional food packages is easy. But ensuring the children we are supporting are gaining weight and getting healthy is much more complex, involving regular counselling, home assessments, medical interventions and sometimes palliative care. 

Thanks to the support of 79 donors through CaringCrowd and from the hard work of our counsellors all of the  children gained weight, including one child who gained a massive 9kgs.  Stay posted for further stories of each of these children but in the meantime we hope you enjoy seeing the pictures of just a few of the children you have changed the lives of.