The following is a poem written for all children who have lost their parents and loved ones to HIV. One of Ananda Foundation's partners Hope For Children Organization in Ethiopia helps counsel children through their grief by giving them a yellow box. Inside are photos, birth certificates, sometimes land titles, and a letter that their parent has written to them.

Once a child's parent passes, this yellow box is then given to the child. Often when a child is really young, play therapy is used and the child is allowed to choose things that they wish for their parent to have in heaven. This is part of the healing process. Sheree wrote this poem upon returning from a trip to the field to visit our sponsored children.

The Yellow Box--A Poem
By: Sheree



If you look inside
My yellow box.
Dreams fly away
My history is
Without  weight
Without purpose. 

                

My childhood fluttered away
When kind Madam gave me the
Yellow Box.
It took my joy
Some time passed
Before I turned the earth one day in Gulele.

                

And then, I understood and left that place.
I put my mother, a little dolly Mommie
In The Yellow Box,
Placed so very gently
A a small cardboard bed.
With a bright red cover
 to keep her
Warm, from cool Addis nights 

                

And one boy I met in
Shiromeda
Shared his picture.
Mary and Jesus
Smiling from clouds and flowers
Floating
In a  big green valley.                

I placed them in a stick frame
Made from twigs given
by the firewood carrier ladies
Who signed at me on the dusty road.
And then I drew an ice cream cone
and put it inside
The Yellow Box. 

Near the cardboard bed,
a tiny sweet to feed her always.
And far away from The Virus.
I placed a small wooden cross
Across Mommy’s Chest.
I made  it from loom ladies’
string and wood chips.
And added one angel
to feed my Mom,
And fly her to the moon
and Sun.
Far away
From The Yellow Box.