Features

NPI Announces Formation of its AGAP Division, for Kenya, on 10 December 2004
(AGAP means Awareness Group on AIDS Prevention)
AGAP is registered with the Non-Governmental Organizations Board of Kenya, and operations are under the direction of Gacii E. Waciuma, MBA, Executive Director. AGAP’s main facilities are located in Nairobi, Kenya. (Email: info@bewareofaids.org)

As of 2004, HIV/ AIDS has claimed the lives of over 1.5 million Kenyans, infected more than 3 million more, and orphaned an estimated 1.2 million children. About 300,000 of the infected are small children who received mother-to-child HIV transmission. The HIV prevalence rate is over 13 percent, and increasing ---with annual deaths now exceeding 180,000 for a population just over 32 million. Kenyan life expectancy has declined from 65 years to the current 46 years due to AIDS. Illness due to AIDS has caused a dramatic drop in productivity, with a daily economic loss of over US$3.5 million. The death of many youthful members of the labor force has greatly increased training costs. There are health care, orphan care, funerals, and other AIDS related costs that have created a major financial crisis. In general family savings have been exhausted. Entire villages are being lost with the population being found in graveyards. Any economic progress made in the last two decades has been mostly lost due to AIDS. Voluntary Counseling & Testing Centers (VTCs), operated by the government and NGOs, are seldom being used since most Kenyans fear all the discrimination that usually comes with being identified as HIV positive. When an HIV positive person can afford antiretrovirals, they are often not effective because most of these people drink polluted water and have poor diets. Most AIDS orphans are already very malnourished, and many live as homeless street-children. Rural Kenyans have a poverty rate of 83 percent, and poverty makes it far more difficult to combat AIDS. Some 56 percent of the total population earns less than US$1 per day, and they cannot afford AIDS medications. An unexpected result of Kenya’s HIV/ AIDS epidemic is the fact that young teachers are dying faster than replacements can be trained.
Thus, AIDS is also acting to damage educational programs in Kenya.

To help stop the approaching AIDS pandemic, AGAP will undertake the development of prevention-oriented attitudes, and prevention oriented actions to include:
1) Beginning an ethnic/ language appropriate billboard campaign with highly
pictorial AIDS prevention message(s).
2) Starting of Radio Schools providing education, entertainment, and repetitive
AIDS prevention messages that are ethnic/ language appropriate.
3) When lacking, providing villages with electricity and community entertainment
centers with strong AIDS prevention messages on posters at each center.
4) Direct intervention by finding what villagers urgently need, and helping to meet
those needs when the villagers fully commit to AIDS prevention practices.
5) Development of special programs to assist and educate the homeless street-
children to stop the spread of AIDS among this group.
6) Assisting villagers with potable water and community food security projects to
improve general health and make any antiretrovirals used more effective.
7) Aiding villagers in the local production of those algal-polyphenolics food
supplements known to greatly enhance immune response.
8) Working with qualified pharmaceutical research firms in the development and
testing of vaccines or drugs to prevent AIDS.
9) A mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention program.
10) Filming of a documentary, for TV and Cinemas, to deliver an AIDS prevention
message within the context of a documentary on Kenya (to be shown using appropriate languages & sub-titles).
11) To undertake any and all other appropriate legal actions to stop the spread of
AIDS ---and to evaluate the progress made for each of these AGAP projects.

What we undertake, and the specific time it is started, will partly depend on critical needs and related options for meeting those needs. The availability of staff, essential resources, and funding shall also determine when and what projects may be started. Within these guidelines, AGAP will always seek to engage in the efforts having the most potential to stop AIDS from killing others. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated, and specific donation instructions are provided on NPI’s website (www.needfulprovision.org). Thank you.

David A. Nuttle, President
Needful Provision, Inc. (NPI)

P.S. Nearly 70 percent of all new HIV infections occur in Africa, and this continent is becoming destabilized from the aspects of health, society, economy, and security. There is rather extensive evidence that terrorist and insurgent groups already seek to take full advantage of the growing chaos. AIDS has therefore become a major international security issue.

 

NPI Announces Formation of its AWARE Division, for India, on 10 November 2004
(AWARE means Action for Welfare & Awakening in the Rural Environment)

AWARE is registered with the Government of Andhra Pradesh Province, in India, and the Government of India (Reg. No. 0101120077). Local operations are directed by D. James Prabhakar, from AWARE’s office in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, 515001, India. Most of the population served is outcastes, untouchables, and isolated tribes living in small villages attempting to live as marginal farmers in areas with very poor soils and many prolonged periods of drought. These are people living on the brink-of-starvation, with a wide assortment of problems derived from shortages of: 1) Potable water; 2) Healthful foods; 3) Health/ medical services; 4) Sanitation; 5) Education; 6) Jobs and income opportunities; 7) Housing; 8) Energy; 9) Communications; 10) Transportation; 11) Loan availability; 12) Seeds, fertilizers, tools and machinery; 13) Marketing systems; and so on. In brief, the people have essentially nothing, and more than half are illiterate. Increasing numbers of these people have AIDS as well as other diseases that reduce the adult population. Despair is all that is plentiful, and in some months over 300 farmers may commit suicide. The farmers that survive may soon exhaust their resources in the search for adequate water supplies. Most villagers walk over 2 (two) miles per day for drinking water supplies, and this water is often polluted. Last, but not least, the local environment has long been seriously damaged by prior, improper use of pesticides.

Government of India (GOI) officials believe that all of the above stated problems are so enormous that solutions, of any sort, are not possible. For political purposes, solutions are planned but implemented on a “token” basis only. The actual solutions practiced have been to just let people die. In prior years, the U.S. Agency for Intl. Development
(USAID), and other “aid” organizations have provided funds to help resolve these types of problems in the Third World. However, corruption usually prevents most funds from being used for the intended purposes. Most Americans, as a whole, have long ignored problems in the Third World. Only now, with the increased threat of terrorism, do many Americans worry about these very impoverished areas being the “incubators” of future terrorists. With this problem in mind, NPI now seeks to find innovative ways to help the poor to better help themselves. By soon demonstrating effective solutions for the many problems of the poorest of the poor, NPI hopes to lead by example. We only ask for your funding support to assist with these efforts. Thank you.

David A. Nuttle, President
Needful Provision, Inc. (NPI)

P.S. The population of Andhra Pradesh Province, in the southeast of India, consists of over 70 million people. Over 1 (one) billion people, 1 (one) of every 6 (six) people in the world, resides in India.

Opening of Latin Division

3/19/2003

Needful Provision, Inc. (NPI), as part of its global expansion, is establishing new offices in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This announcement is to introduce an NPI Division, in Mexico, known as Asociacion Comunitaria de Autosuficiencia, A.C. (ACA). This office will be under the direction of Wendee Hill, at email: ggs@ggs.com.mx. Initial ACA efforts will be focused on community food security, organic farming, and environmental protection in the impoverished, polluted area of Jalisco, Mexico (in the Lerma River Valley). ACA was first organized in 1997, as a Mexican Charity. As a Latin Division of NPI, ACA will comply with all the regulations for U.S. and Mexican charities. (Donations are currently needed for training of poor Mexican farmers ------- training in organic farming, value-added product development, and environmental protection.)