Welcome! Mhoro! Tjike!
Footsteps For Africa is dedicated to providing meaningful and impactful aid to orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in Namibia.
Half of Namibians live with an income under $2 a day and most are unemployed.
The Namibia Demographic and Health Survey found that “the HIV/AIDS epidemic has led to a growing number of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC)… and they often lag behind other children in meeting their basic needs, for example, owning at least one pair of shoes and two sets of clothes. Only 41 percent of OVC have all these basics requirements.”
Quality clothing and shoes are hard to come by for the average Namibian, and OVC are especially in great need of these items, particularly in the winter months (April-October). Some of them resort to fashioning shoes out of plastic bottles, straw, leather scraps or tire tread, or wearing the same outfit until it literally falls apart.
The 2011 initiative was successful in delivering thousands of clothes and shoes to needy individuals around Namibia. Footsteps For Africa worked with the Namibian government and local Namibian humanitarian organizations to distribute these goods to the most needy OVC, and these entities continue to assist Footsteps in identifying other needy groups to target for our 2012 initiative.
In 2011, we met numerous children who walk the equivalent of 4 miles round-trip to school every day wearing shoes that did not fit well and were falling apart. High quality, durable winter clothing is also either unavailable or financially inaccessible to many of these children. Given that Namibian winters can reach below-freezing temperatures and most of these children live and attend school in uninsulated buildings, the need for warm clothing is great.
