Fifty-two-year-old Lorraine began volunteering in the Shalom community organisation of Kabwe, Zambia in 2003. The divorced woman’s children were grown and moved out of her home when she became a volunteer and she showered all of her motherly love and care onto the patients and vulnerable children she dedicated herself to visiting.
In 2007, Lorraine became ill and tests revealed that she was HIV positive. This former volunteer of the home-based care suddenly became a patient, who with the help of her fellow volunteers began taking medication that would keep her alive. Today, Lorraine continues to battle her illness, but her active devotion as a volunteer has not ceased. Though unable to visit children and patients like she used to, Lorraine has taken two orphaned children into her own home to provide them a place to live safely and be cared for lovingly.
Lorraine’s story is one of a chain of giving: Lorraine receives as a patient of the HBC, but also continues to give, sewing into the lives of two young children.