What is the Jubilee Ministry?

The Jubilee Ministry is the AIDS-in-Africa task force of the Diocese’s Mission Strategy program.

We are a group of individuals, lay and clergy, who come together in the community of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Massachusetts to help to repair the suffering inflicted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

We are a ministry of action. By vote of the Diocesan Convention, our ministry receives 0.7% of the operating funds of the Diocese. Parishes and individuals also contribute to our work. In partnership with African provinces and dioceses, we use these funds and our own skills to plan and administer programs in Africa for training home-based care workers, supporting orphan feeding and education, assisting Anglican hospitals and clinics to deliver basic medical care to orphans and afflicted families and to pregnant women, providing testing and aftercare, and preventing transmission.

There is no cure for AIDS. It hollows out the population, taking away people in their most vigorous years, who leave behind both their young children and their elderly parents. Mothers communicate the infection to many of their babies. Farmers can no longer raise the food that would prolong life. Teachers disappear from classrooms. Hospitals are overwhelmed. There is no question of institutionalizing orphans: the numbers are far too large.

Death from AIDS is slow and difficult, as damaged immune systems cannot defend against a range of opportunistic infections like tuberculosis or pneumonia, diarrhea or measles, even common thrush. Without medicines and proper care, these infections often kill. Because the symptoms of AIDS can be long in appearing—as much as 10 years or more—even in the unlikely event that all new infections could be halted, the Continent would still be in crisis for many years to come.

The conscience of the world was touched by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami, and so it should have been. But every two months more people in Africa perish from AIDS than were lost in the whole tsunami. Every year we lose millions. Some have called the HIV/AIDS pandemic “the silent tsunami.”

Who we are

Some History of the program

Some photos

Reports

How to reach us