We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erin Todd. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erin below.

Erin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Kiunga’s mission is to see people in Kenya who have been isolated or disadvantaged by living with HIV/AIDS find community, value, hope and healing. We do this through a support group model which links people to education, resources, and meaningful relationships.

Kiunga means “the link” in Swahili and was inspired by our project officer, Mbae Leon, who describes himself as the link between the health care facility and the community.

Kenya has a generalized HIV epidemic. While antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) are widely available in Kenya, the stigma and discrimination surrounding HIV prevents far too many people from accessing care and treatment. But the support group acts as an entry point to these services.

If someone tests for HIV and it turns positive, immediately connecting that person to a support group can be a game-changer. As an example, through the support groups, people receive education on things like the importance of adhering to their ARV regimen and eating nutritious foods to help keep them healthy and are also provided with the resources to establish and grow their own gardens to make that possible.

While those things are essential, perhaps even more importantly, upon joining a support group, someone who has just learned their status is also welcomed by a group of people who can relate to the very experience in which they find themselves. Right away, the isolation that could so easily come with this news is cut off and the person sees that they’re not alone. They have a community around them to support them, they hear stories of others who have walked the same road and see that there is hope for a healthy and positive future.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

My background is in communications and marketing. About 8 years ago, I spent some time focusing on where I wanted to be and the kind of work I really wanted to be doing. During that time, I came across a nonprofit that was partnering with organizations in sub-Saharan Africa to address the HIV and water crises and became passionate about their mission. I relocated from Indiana to Tennessee to work with them for a few years. It was during that time that I connected with Mbae Leon.

Since then, I completely changed career fields and now work full-time in technology sales, which is what has given me the ability to formally partner with Leon to continue strengthening support groups for people living with HIV by founding Kiunga.

If anyone hadn’t experienced it before, the last couple of years of walking through a global pandemic has given us all a small taste of isolation and how painful that can be. So, while we may not be able to fully understand the experience of someone who has just received a positive HIV test in a small village in the middle of Kenya, I think each of us can better understand why it matters so much to push back against isolation anyway we can.

Each month, we hear stories coming out of the support groups about people feeling supported, understood, known, and loved. To me, this is the most important impact Kiunga can have, and it is my greatest honor to witness isolation being defeated for our support group members and stigma being pushed back bit by bit.

It is truly a joy every time we hear a new story of someone whose life has been impacted because of one of these groups. I’d love to invite anyone reading this to join our mailing list at kiunga.org/signup so you, too, can share in the celebration of their stories of hope and healing!

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

As I mentioned, Mbae Leon is the inspiration behind Kiunga and he now serves as the lead project officer for Kiunga. Several years ago, I had a couple of opportunities to visit Isiolo, Kenya, where Leon was working to establish and manage support groups for people living with HIV. On those visits, I saw firsthand how important these groups are and heard stories from members about how their lives were being impacted by the groups.

On one of those visits, I met a woman by the name of Phoebe who had faced intense stigma and struggled greatly since learning she was HIV-positive. But Leon met and connected her with a support group where she learned how she could stay healthy throughout her pregnancies and give birth to babies who would be HIV free. At the time that I met Phoebe, she’d recently given birth to her second child, and her firstborn, Christina, was old enough to take the test to confirm her HIV status since she was no longer breastfeeding. I had the privilege of being there when Christina was tested and confirmed to be HIV-negative!

A couple of years later, the grant that had been financing Leon’s support group program came to an end and the organization where Leon works full-time no longer had a way to fund the initiative. He reached out to me to ask if I could help, and while I knew I couldn’t meet the need on my own, it was also something I couldn’t say “no” to. He needed such a modest amount of funds to keep this incredible work going and I believe so strongly in the effectiveness of the support group model, I committed to try to find a way to make that happen. It took a couple of years and a whole lot of learning, but Kiunga was founded in the fall of 2020.

(And I’m happy to tell you that Kiunga now has two support groups specifically for pregnant and lactating mothers and 18 babies have been born HIV-negative!)

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

All of our support groups are led by community health volunteers (CHVs). I mentioned previously that when someone tests positive for HIV, getting them plugged into a support group can make a tremendous difference in their ability to cope with the diagnosis.

Kiunga stations a CHV in the local health care facility to help with that. Having a support group leader onsite allows intervention to happen immediately. As soon as someone tests positive, they are introduced to the CHV who can link them to the support group closest to their home, walk with them as they begin to process the information, counsel them through telling their loved ones, advise them as they get started on their medications, and again, most importantly, let them know that they are not and will not be alone as they navigate their new reality.

Contact Info:

• Website: kiunga.org
• Instagram: @kiunga.inc
• Facebook: facebook.com/kiunga.inc