Awaken the Legacy at

Cherish High School

Our mission at Cherish Uganda is to care for the HIV+ child. The generation of children affected by HIV has grown into teenage hood and along with that comes a different set of challenges:

(1) How to navigate through puberty with the challenges that HIV presents

(2) Preparing for adulthood 

(3) Making good choices and having a value system that allows one to thrive

(4) Understanding your values against the rhetoric of stigma. 

Our response was to open up a high school that would address these challenges and opportunities in a holistic way. Our strap line is: "awaken the legacy" because we believe that our children will contribute to changing their own story for good. Our God given hope is that our high school will give an environment in which HIV+ young people feel valued and challenged to change the status quo.

CHS is the first school in east Africa that focuses on empowering, enrolling, and caring for teens with HIV. 

Watch the 10 minute, documentary-style film on the vision for CHS

At full capacity, Cherish High School will enroll 300 Students per yer, students with and without HIV, and students from Uganda as well as other Sub-Saharan African Countries.

CHS has a Ugandan curriculum that is underpinned with a life skills program that fosters creativity, entrepreneurship and the ability to make good decisions.  

The foundations of our high school are built on Christ centered values believing that God is the redeemer of our broken world and so we are charged with the mandate to address injustice, mercy, and truth. We believe God has a passion for the disenfranchised, the orphan and longs for them to thrive.

AIDS is now the leading cause of death among adolescents (aged 10-19) in Africa.

There are more than 170,000 children living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda and over 50% of these children are not currently receiving the free HIV treatment. 

Among the vast numbers of orphaned and vulnerable children, children living with HIV are often overlooked or unseen because of the stigma associated with HIV. With very little care offered to this marginalized group of children, we feel that God has our organization to be part of the redeeming story He wants to author in their lives. 

According to AVERT, the top 2 reasons teens don’t adhere to medication: (1) Traveling a long distance to a clinic (2)  If their regular trips to the clinic are being noticed by friends or members of the school 

“The number of adolescents dying due to AIDS-related illnesses tripled between 2000 and 2015, the only age group to have experienced a rise. In 2016, 55,000 adolescents between the ages of 10-19 had died through AIDS-related causes. AIDS is now the leading cause of death among young people in Africa and the second leading cause of death among young people worldwide.” -AVERT,