World Orphan day is celebrated on the 7th of May every year. The day was inaugurated in New Yolk city in 2002 and is now celebrated internationally. It is a grassroots campaign that calls on donor countries to commit at least 10 percent of their AIDS funding to the needs of orphans and vulnerable children (WorldAIDSorphans.com).

It is estimated that there are at least 15 million children worldwide who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. But there are many other vulnerable children, who are orphaned or homeless as a result of such things as other diseases, poverty, war or natural disasters.

It used to be that if a child lost just one parent, a father for example, he/ she was not considered an orphan. However, in some cases the remaining parent is bedridden so the child has almost the same situation as an orphan and he or she is vulnerable.

The orphan problem is not unique to one country but most countries are now witness to the great numbers of orphans and vulnerable children among their population.

The numbers of orphans are projected to increase as AIDS continues to claim more adult lives, and it is estimated that the number of AIDS orphans in Swaziland will increase by at least half of it is today; from 69 000 to 120 000 by 2010.

The issue of orphans is one that needs addressing both today in future, if projections are anything to go by. Many of these children live as nomads; in pipes and other places many of us would not choose to live in. AIDS orphans and vulnerable children often don’t have families to raise them, they don’t have access to quality education or health care either.

As a result, for many of them, their brains won’t develop as they should in normal childhood, which means the future looks bleak as bleak as these children’s lives. They cannot be the future when they suffer from stress, malnutrition, maltreatment and other requirements necessary for a child to grow up healthily. Their situation should be a concern for everyone. Children are the future and there is no future without them.

This means a huge percentage of the next generation of adults will have to survive by all the things, all the means that sensitizing or raising awareness about the challenges they are faced with may offer.

World Orphan Day is not just a day to celebrate AIDS orphans in African and others across the world, but it is about bringing to the open the challenges faced by orphaned and vulnerable children because of circumstances beyond their control.

It is a day to use to get people pledging to help and those who may not be aware of the plight of these children, to become aware. This is a day to show how orphans are treated and the challenges they are faced with. Worldwide they are given names which at times stigmatise them and make them feel like outcasts. These are words like streetkids.

There are many awful problems in this world today, but our first task is to raise the next generation in a way that they can become productive citizens and not become child soldiers or terrorists or drug dealers or prostitutes.