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"Sometimes you feel like you have a huge secret ... and it feels like it's going to burst out of you."
The five HIV-affected 10- and 12-year-old girls who wrote that line inhabit a world of life-sized needles, grey skies and black, teary eyes. It's one where wishes to be happy, for their parents and siblings to be healthy, for HIV/AIDS to "go away" usually don't come true.
But through a local AIDS help agency called The Teresa Group, the girls all of whom either have HIV or have family members suffering from HIV or AIDS have found support and learned how to live within families fractured by fatal disease. They've even written a book under the pen name The Group of Five entitled Bye-bye, Secrets, so other kids living with HIV know they're not alone.
That book, along with Hopes, Wishes and Dreams, a compilation of HIV-affected children's art and writing also produced by The Teresa Group, helped the agency stand out among the 88 organizations nominated for the 2005 Ruth Atkinson Hindmarsh Award. The $50,000 honour, sponsored by the Atkinson Charitable Foundation and the four Hindmarsh families, is presented each year by the foundation to an Ontario-based group devoted to helping economically disadvantaged children.
In the case of The Teresa Group, the children and their families are from Toronto's poorest enclaves.
The kids are badly in need of a safe haven where they can be children without having to administer medication to parents, monitor siblings or do chores in spite of battles with HIV and AIDS.
"These lovely things very seldom happen," executive director Karen Vance-Wallace said of the award, which will be presented tonight. "It's just a tremendous boost for the work that we do."
With a shoestring staff and some devoted volunteers, the group cobbles together government grants and fundraising money to get by. Since 1991 it has been providing emotional support and HIV education to children and families dealing with the virus and AIDS.
In 1996, it began what it says are the country's first AIDS-related emotional support groups for children by establishing the Leading the Way Program for youngsters aged 6-17. While some enrolled have HIV or AIDS, others are learning how to deal with the fear that comes with learning of a family member's diagnosis. Others have lost parents or are living with sick relatives. Some don't even know their family members have HIV, only that something is wrong, a parent is sick.
Simone Shindler, a social worker and the group's counselling director, said weekly activities run the gamut from counselling sessions to crafts and other activities. Artwork, Shindler said, is key in helping kids express feelings of fear, trauma and loss. The book-publishing projects have given many of the children an outlet to print secrets and the drawings that are their therapy: Marker-style portraits of stick figures having their hearts ripped out; bed-ridden parents with squiggly, downturned lips; stormy landscapes.
"I wonder what would happen if I had AIDS instead of my sister and how my life would be if my mom, dad and grandmother were still alive," wrote Rebecca, 11.
"I get worried that they might die and leave me," wrote Joseph, 9.
The books, which have been distributed to hospitals and other community support organizations, are also a place for kids to imagine their world without AIDS: "You would have less to worry about. You wouldn't have to worry about people dying or that you might have to leave your home. Life would be better. You wouldn't have to grow up so fast," wrote one of The Group of Five.
Nancy Hindmarsh, granddaughter of Ruth Atkinson Hindmarsh and a member of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation board of trustees, said The Teresa Group's application stood out "immediately" from the others she helped judge. "It's a safe place to fall for many, many people," Hindmarsh said. "This is a very vulnerable, stigmatized community. Disenfranchised, too. We just knew it was so important."
Ruth Atkinson Hindmarsh, who devoted her life to improving the lives of disadvantaged children and served as president of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, was the daughter of foundation founder and former Toronto Star publisher Joseph E. Atkinson.
For more information about The Teresa Group visit www.teresagroup.ca
Click here for more information about the Ruth Atkinson Hindmarsh Award.
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