Kathy Burr didn’t know too much about the AIDS pandemic until she landed a job as director of outreach last year at Cherry Hills Community Church in Highlands Ranch.
“I didn’t know anyone with AIDS,” she said. “The whole crisis was on another continent, and I wasn’t personally affected by it. My head was in the sand. I was blown away when I learned what was going on in Africa.”
Members of the church’s HIV/AIDS committee brought her up to speed. Now she’s working to help raise awareness of the problem and to motivate others to help.
This weekend, she joins other members of Cherry Hills Community Church to construct a 3,000-square-foot replica of three African villages affected by AIDS.
Combining an audio tour with photographs, the exhibit — called the “World Vision Experience: AIDS” — will be the first stop in Colorado of a national tour that will visit 80 cities this year.
It focuses on the lives of four children affected by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, where about 25 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There are huts made of wood and topped with grass. Smoke swirls up from cooking fires near small spare beds.
Wearing audio headsets, the viewers are taken into the lives of the children, from a fishing village in Uganda to the mountains of Lesotho. They’re directed to enter the hut, sit on a bed and listen to the child’s voice, telling his or her own story of life in a community devastated by AIDS.
Launched three years ago, the exhibit has been featured at the 2006 Global AIDS Conference in Toronto and at such megachurches as pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in California, where Tami Snowden of Cherry Hills Community Church saw it.
“When I walked out, what hit me the most was how these children have been really robbed of their childhood,” Snowden said. “This is not what God intends for children. It’s not right that they can’t realize their dreams.”
The free exhibit was created by World Vision, a Christian organization that helps children around the world.
Mark Burr, who is married to Kathy Burr, recently traveled to Uganda to create a videotape to accompany the exhibition.
“We want to give our church the sense of what is happening there and how devastating all these factors have been to the people,” he says.
Mark Burr, a professional videographer, was particularly moved by his interview with a 9-year-old boy named Onen Jasper, who is responsible for raising his brothers, ages 3 and 4, after his parents died of AIDS.
“I asked what they talked about at night, and he said, ‘What we’re going to eat tomorrow, or whose field we’re going to work in so we can get fed.’ I had tears running down my face. It was incredibly emotional.”
By using the voices and faces of real children, both through the exhibition and the video, church members hope to motivate people to take action, either through sponsoring a child or assembling a care kit.
“Whether you’re a Christian or not, it’s about reaching down to give a helping hand,” Burr said. “To get in the mud with them, and to some degree suffer a bit with them, and understand where they are.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
If you go
The “World Vision Experience: AIDS” exhibit will be open to the public through July 15 at Cherry Hills Community Church, 3900 Grace Blvd., Highlands Ranch. For more information about the free exhibit, call 303-325-8427 or go to and click on “Step Into Africa.”
