While many people have read about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in China receive less press. In 2005 UNAIDS estimated that there were close to 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China; a report in China Today believes the total to be over 800,000 individuals. While precise numbers are difficult to come by, the epidemic has had an unquestionably significant and negative impact on children in China, many of whom have been orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS.

OAA’s China project began in the summer of 2006 when our organization established a partnership with AIDS Care China, an internationally respected NGO that works to help people affected by AIDS. Our local contact, Thomas Cai, runs the AIDS Care China’s operations on the ground, working with a team of community leaders, educators, and physicians to award educational scholarships to children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS.

Thomas Cai distributes the funds that OAA provides on a twice monthly basis, checking the children’s physical and psychosocial wellbeing before the aid is distributed to the youth’s caretaker. AIDS Care China collects receipts for all expenses, which are sent to OAA along with annual biographies of the children. OAA is currently supporting six children in Hubei province in the south of China. The Orphans Against AIDS project in China has been funded largely thanks to the generosity of the Magdalen College Trust in Oxford.