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Norwich worker's mission to help Aids orphans

VictorGillon22009: Norwich Christian care worker Victor Gillon is giving up six months of his life to work with HIV/Aids orphans in Mozambique in February.
 
Victor, who works at Cromwell House in Norwich, has been to Zimbabwe three times, Malawi once and Mozambique once, mostly with teams from New Hope Christian Centre, where he is a member.
 
Last year he went for three weeks to Mozambique and made frequent visits to Nhamatanda where the House of the Sparrow orphanage is based. He was struck with how poor Mozambique is and the orphans won his heart, so much so that he is now sponsoring two of them – both called Antonio.
 
Victor has studied theology from home for the last seven years and in 2007 graduated at a ceremony in Cheltenham. "After seven years of studying, I can now put it to good use teaching in Africa," he said. Victor expects the work to be a mixture of practical tasks such as helping improve some of the buildings, and teaching, as well as befriending the children and spending time with them.
 
"Last time, I took them a football which went down extremely well," he said. "This time I want to take some board games and material to help them with their English."
 
Mozambique is of course Portuguese-speaking, though some of the older boys speak reasonable English and they are keen to learn more. "The older ones can act as interpreters for the younger ones," said Victor.
 
Victor is a trustee of Norwich-based development charity Word, headed by Everjoice Makuve, and in both Zimbabwe and Malawi Victor was able to visit food aid projects run by Word.
 
"In Malawi, we saw this line of little children queuing up with plastic plates for their weekly high-protein meal. We were able to add some support which meant the children got more than one of these meals a week to supplement their very basic diet."
 
For more information on the trip or Word ring New Hope on 01603 617905.
 
Pictured above is Victor Gillon with African orphans.

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