Help keep kids HIV-free!

Healthy communities start with healthy children, which is why fighting and preventing disease in communities impacted by poverty matters. The HIV and AIDS epidemic in particular has upended the lives of children globally, especially in communities without adequate healthcare. Tens of millions of people have died, communities have faced funeral after funeral, and millions of children have been left behind.

When the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was started in 2003, it turned the tide on HIV and AIDS by providing resources for treatment and prevention. In the past 20 years, PEPFAR support has led to more than 5.5 million babies being born HIV-free to pregnant women with HIV. PEPFAR has also connected over 7.1 million orphans, vulnerable children, and their caregivers with critical care and support services, and its interventions have saved an estimated 25 million lives total.

We celebrate how PEPFAR supports children, and we dream of a future where all of them are free of this disease. But the fight isn’t over, and this critical work is at risk:

  • 10 million people – nearly a quarter of those living with HIV – are still not able to access the antiretroviral therapy they need to survive and thrive.
  • Only roughly half of HIV-positive children currently access treatment, which is especially disturbing because half of them will die before their second birthday if they remain untreated.

This month, Congress is holding hearings on PEPFAR’s reauthorization — will you take a minute today to send a pre-filled email to your leaders asking them to reauthorize PEPFAR?

What makes World Vision Advocates unique?

We rely on God’s spirit and power.

The exodus of God’s people from Egypt is the first example of advocacy in Scripture, and it guides our approach to advocacy today (see below, from Exodus 3 and 4). All spiritual gifts and skill sets can contribute to the work of advocacy, and God’s power can move our leaders to action. Trusting in this power, we give prayer an integral place in our advocacy efforts. Additionally, as 88% of current U.S. members of Congress publicly claim faith in Christ, we believe U.S. Christians have a particularly unique role to play in influencing them, and we equip advocates to employ their faith as they engage with elected officials.

We amplify the voices of the poor; we don’t replace them.

We advocate with authority and confidence, using evidence rooted in our relationships with the poor at the community level. Our efforts are intended to amplify the voices of the unheard, and whenever possible, we let the poor speak for themselves — just as God declared in Isaiah that the poor would play the primary role in the restoration of their communities. Believing that our advocacy is on behalf of real lives rather than abstract issues, and that those lives have great worth and value to God, we lift up the stories of those in poverty. We trust that these stories will move our leaders to make decisions with compassion.
  • Proverbs 14:31
  • Isaiah 61:1, 3-4

We approach governments as partners, not targets.

Understanding that most elected officials enter office with good intentions and a sincere desire to effect positive change, we seek to cast a vision for a better world. Leaders need the courage to fulfill their role as God intended — to be servants for the well-being of everyone, including the poor. When leaders fail to fulfill this God-ordained role, we seek to speak truth prophetically and to hold leaders accountable to act justly in serving this common good.
  • Romans 13:4
  • Psalm 72:1-4,12-14