Baobab

Some month ago i was working for a Germany-based NGO called the Baobab Family in Mombasa, Kenya to capture their projects, which is beside an orphanage mainly about HIV/Aids, two subjects which are standing in a very close conherence (as you could see here). The orphanage was and is the key project with what the whole project started, nowadays having 31 kids in care. Because of the major problem behind it, HIV/Aids, they started two other projects, namely called the Baobab HIV Care & Awareness program and the Baobab production program. in the production program they give the supported people a chance to take care of their lifes by giving them education in mainly tailoring. The Care & Awareness program on the one hand supports HIV+ women to give them the power again by giving them the feeling of not being alone with it and also with giving them the chance to work and care for their families that way by doing a little bit of money. But another big part of their work is doing prevention and reconnaissance work to fight the stigmatisation of HIV/Aids in the community and create a new understanding of the disease. They start with it at a very young age now, in the schools, doing little clubs where they write poems and do little theater about the theme. For me, as said before, it seems like that education is the only sustainable way to get out of this when you look at it on a larger time scale.
The film is showcasing the different projects as well as it is giving a moving look behind the scenes of the lifes of the people (Watch the full talk with Benta here). Even when a film could not give you the experience, the smell in the slums, the sounds and the feeling of being in this little huts to understand a bit more, what it means to live under this circumstances, something what is even hard to understand when you are there, maybe it could give a glimpse of a feeling for it. And what could actually be done. It’s not the big things that make the biggest changes there, sometimes the smallest things could change the life of the people there forever.