Since 1993 we had been working with sick and needy children in Igoji's Sant'Anna hospital. In those days the hospital was entirely run by the Don Orione nuns: AINA, however, was running a specific service exclusively for children suffering from malnutrition. Children were offered not only medical attention, but also a protected area, in which they could play, study and socialize. Over time, however, the problem posed by caring for HIV-positive children emerged in all its dramatic rebound: poor families which did not have the means to look after sick children abandoned them in front of the hospital's gates; others, sometimes just slightly older and whose mothers had died during childbirth, were abandoned in a state of severe malnutrition. It was at that point that we decided not to continue offering a limited intervention, but – also thanks to the pressure of the local communities and the encouragement we received from our sponsors - we embarked on a wider project in order to offer to the children not only medical care and protection but also the possibility of imagining a future of health, well being and education.

Kenya has had one of the worst HIV and AIDS epidemics in the world, with the most dramatic period in 2000. Today the percentage of those affected has fallen to 6.3% of the population, thanks to increased public awareness and the commitment of the local government  towards information and prevention. It is estimated however - according to avert.org and unaids.org - that about one and a half million people now live with AIDS in Kenya, and  that a million two hundred children are orphaned due to AIDS. A growing commitment to care for those affected (among those living with HIV, only one child in three receives appropriate care) is therefore as fundamental as the commitment to try and reduce the infection from mother to child (in 2009 still about 23 thousand children were infected at birth).

Prejudice, discrimination, lack of adequate information, the high cost of drugs to be administered before and after birth push families to abandon their babies either as newborns or just a short time after birth when families are faced with the complexity and the cost of caring for ailing children.

This is the background in which lie the roots of AINA's Children's Home: we started fund raising in 2005, then we bought the land in Nchiru, we followed the various stages of the building project and – finally – managed to open the center in 2010.