HELP AND SUSTENANCE: During a recent visit to Matipwiri, the village in Malawi sponsored by Trinity Church, Ruth Thurmond Scott, center, delivered a supplemental food package to residents affected by HIV and AIDS.

Thursday, December 1 is World AIDS Day, an annual observance that promotes awareness of the AIDS pandemic. While AIDS-related morality rates have dropped dramatically in some parts of the globe, there are regions where the disease continues to claim victims at a devastating rate.

One of these is sub-Saharan Africa. According to the United Nations, more than 22 million people there are infected with HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS if left untreated. In Malawi, a small southeastern African country with over 15 million people, almost one million children are AIDS orphans.

Statistics like these have prompted representatives of Princeton’s Trinity Church, long involved in outreach, to take action. Since 2010, the Episcopal congregation has been in partnership with the Global Aids Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), trying to respond to the challenges of the deadly disease in small villages. Currently, the church is in the midst of a three-year program helping a village handle the crisis.

“AIDS is a condition we don’t talk about much,” said Ruth Thurmond Scott, a Trinity parishioner and a board trustee of GAIA. “But there are some new exciting treatment targets out there and they need to be known.”

Trinity’s first sponsorship of a village was between 2011 and 2014; the current one ends in 2017. At the end of these grass-roots interventions, GAIA hands off the program to the locals and moves on to a new village. The organization has served 180 villages in the last 16 years, according to Ms. Scott, who has been to Malawi twice.

“Malawi is an area of extreme poverty. About 80 percent of the population survive as subsistence farmers,” she said. “They survive on less than a dollar a day per person. The land is susceptible to droughts and flooding. It has the world’s ninth highest HIV prevalence rate among adults. The ability to contain it is very difficult because the country’s health care system is undeveloped and there is a critical shortage of health care workers — three registered nurses per 10,000 people.”

GAIA runs the programs by working with a village chief and local women leaders who are provided a modest stipend to serve as community caregivers. Through them, the organization provides community-based health education, orphan care, supplemental food to HIV-positive orphans, and home-based care. Youth clubs are established to focus on prevention and educate about gender equality.

Ms. Scott’s two trips to Malawi were in 2012 and 2016. During her most recent trip, she spent time in the village Trinity is helping, giving her a chance to observe GAIA’s work on the ground.

“The people I met are warm, very welcoming, and resilient considering the burden they carry,” she said. “I felt very inspired seeing progress being made. It’s also heartbreaking because of the extreme poverty. You can’t help but compare it to the privileges we have. There is no indoor plumbing, schools are crowded, the roads are muddy, there is no infrastructure. And many children just can’t see any ladders of opportunity to change their lives.”

Ms. Scott was particularly touched by the plight of an eight-year-old AIDS orphan in the village. Known as Promise, he wasn’t attending school because he was unable to walk. “I met him, his grandmother, and his aunts and cousins,” Ms. Scott recalled. “He was disabled by polio and had become too heavy for his grandmother to carry him to school.”

Working with staff, the program was able to purchase a wheelchair for Promise. “His smile was incredible,” Ms. Scott said of the moment when the chair was delivered. “And his grandmother was ecstatic because she could deliver him to school for the first time. It was heartwarming. And it gives hope not just to him, but to others in the village. He’s better integrated now and a kind of role model for someone with a disability.”

In working with GAIA, Trinity has a partner whose core values of transparency and sustainability are key. “We really are trusting that the mission is what it says it is and the funding is being used to empower the people,” Ms. Scott said. “Our commitment is to build capacity in Malawi and make changes needed so the people are empowered.”

As for World AIDS Day, “It is a chance to say we’ve come a long way,” she said. “But we have a long way to go.”