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Small Nonprofit, Big Impact: Meet Juni Asiyo

Juni Asiyo has helped build dozens of homes for orphans with AIDS. She's also built a dormitory, as well as helping with other needs in her native village in Kenya. Now Asiyo is hoping to recruit others to adopt small communities to help in a similar way.
Juni Asiyo
Juni Asiyo has helped build dozens of homes for orphans with AIDS. She's also built a dormitory, as well as helping with other needs in her native village in Kenya. Now Asiyo is hoping to recruit others to adopt small communities to help in a similar way.
Juni Asiyo has helped build dozens of homes for orphans with AIDS. She's also built a dormitory, as well as helping with other needs in her native village in Kenya. Now Asiyo is hoping to recruit others to adopt small communities to help in a similar way.
Credit Juni Asiyo
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Juni Asiyo
Juni Asiyo has helped build dozens of homes for orphans with AIDS. She's also built a dormitory, as well as helping with other needs in her native village in Kenya. Now Asiyo is hoping to recruit others to adopt small communities to help in a similar way.

Note: This program is a rebroadcast from April 27. 2015.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the most serious HIV and AIDS epidemic in the world. In 2012, roughly 25 million people were living with HIV, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the global total. 

The battle is ongoing, as researchers, educators, and doctors continue to work to stop AIDS once and for all.

Sequoia Helping Hands, a local nonprofit, is doing its part by attacking the disease at the grassroots level with AIDS awareness campaigns. It also provides healthcare, shelter and food so that children can grow into healthy adults. They assist children by providing education so that they can become self-sufficient after childhood.Meet software engineer and founder of Sequoia Helping Hands, Juni Asiyo

The organization was founded by Juni Asiyo a Triangle software engineer who’s originally from a village in Kenya. 

Growing up in Kenya, Asiyo saw children get sick and die because of lack of proper medical assistance. She was haunted by those images when she went away to college in the United States. 

After college, she returned home to help improve the situation. At the time Kenya, like other African nations, was in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. It affected every aspect of life. Asiyo and a few American friends started a small nonprofit that built homes and promoted health education in the region. 

Host Frank Stasio talks with Asiyo about her efforts to help people in Kenya and her life experiences

Copyright 2017 North Carolina Public Radio

Hady Mawajdeh is a native Texan, born and raised in San Antonio. He listened to Fresh Air growing up and fell in love with public radio. He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication at Texas State University and specialized in electronic media. He worked at NPR affiliate stations KUT and KUTX in Austin, Texas as an intern, producer, social media coordinator, and a late-night deejay.