Choose Life, where HIV rhymes with dignity

As soon as we arrived at the Choose Life Home-Based Care centre, we were greeted by the warm smiles of Sister Susan and the Sacred Heart Sisters. The commitment of these sisters goes beyond medical care for people living with HIV: it is a mission that transforms pain into hope, vulnerability into strength, and guides the community towards genuine change.

Our journey takes us to northern Uganda, to Karamoja, a region where difficulties seem to be stratified, especially for HIV-positive women. Here, over 70% of women have never started or completed primary education. This figure, already dramatic, worsened during the pandemic, with an increase in pregnancies and early marriages. And for women with HIV, stigma makes everything even more difficult, affecting every aspect of their lives, from access to school to the possibility of working. Here, Choose Life works with the aim of restoring their dignity and autonomy, breaking the cycle of poverty and isolation.

Together with the association ‘Together we can...,’ we work to offer 80 HIV-positive women and girls in Karamoja literacy and vocational training courses so that they can build a future of their own. Here, they learn how to run a self-supporting business, receiving small loans to start micro-enterprises. During our visit, we attended a training course in agro-forestry: for many of these women, learning cultivation and beekeeping techniques means being able to contribute to their family's well-being and generate a stable income.

One of the symbols of this rebirth is the Choose Life demonstration garden, a place where not only vegetables but also hope is cultivated. It is a moving experience to see how, for many of them, working with the land means regaining control of their lives, especially in a region where virus transmission is still a growing risk and where resources for prevention are scarce.

But the benefits of the project do not stop there. The training provides the women with new livelihoods such as beekeeping and honey processing, activities that become professions and sources of pride. Talking to the beneficiaries, their extraordinary sense of transformation emerges: ‘Today, we are too busy with our work to think about alcohol,’ one woman tells us. The reference to alcohol is painful. Last year alone, six female beneficiaries lost their lives to this plague, Sister Susan tells us. To help combat this problem, Choose Life started the first Alcoholics Anonymous group in Uganda. It is a bold and innovative step that goes hand in hand with a commitment to provide these women not only with an income, but also with a path to personal rebirth.

Our trip was more than just a monitoring visit. Together with Sister Susan, we saw the seeds of radical change planted in a soil of hope and change.