What do Mission and Outreach really look like? How tall are they? Male or female? And when does "putting faith into action" mean reaching out far beyond our wallet or comfortable lifestyle? In I Am That Child, Elizabeth Geitz helps answer these questions as she fleshes out the human faces of AIDS, poverty and sexism as experienced first-hand in an orphanage in Cameroon, West Africa.

Journalist Craig Timberg, the former Johannesburg bureau chief for The Washington Post, says that international AIDS organizations working in Africa went off in the wrong direction in fighting the spread of HIV across the continent. This links to a National Public Radio interview on the program Fresh Air.

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has recorded a video message for World AIDS Day in which he talks about the part sexual violence plays in the spread of HIV, calling it "one of the most shameful facts of our day."

HIV remains one of the most formidable challenges facing the human family and we ignore this challenge, literally, at our own peril. This is clear from the final declaration agreed by the U.N. General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS that met June 8-10 in New York. The cost in human suffering, lost opportunities and diversion of resources remains a challenge that no one can escape, but there is hope of better protection through increased access to anti-retroviral drugs, early testing, and recent medical breakthroughs.

“The world has watched as we forged a new declaration that will shape the endgame of the AIDS epidemic,” General Assembly President Joseph Deiss told the leaders, ministers and diplomats after banging his gavel to signify the declaration’s adoption by consensus. Funding to combat AIDS increased eight-fold, from $1.8 billion in 2001 to $16 billion in 2010, but the U.N. agency to combat AIDS says between $22 billion and $24 billion is needed to address the magnitude of the crisis and respond to global demands for prevention, treatment and fighting discrimination against HIV sufferers.

Retired Anglican Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, an outspoken activist for human rights and equality in Uganda, delivered a presentation at the United Nations in New York on April 8 calling for the global decriminalization of homosexuality as a way to make progress in the HIV/AIDS pandemic.