The new look will debut tomorrow during the day, and we’ll be troubleshooting any problems throughout the day.

There may be times on Friday when the blog isn’t available, but other than that, please let us know if you find anything wrong with the new site (e.g., broken links, screwed-up formatting, things that don’t work like you expect them to, etc.).

We won’t be publishing a fresh new post until after the Memorial Day weekend. Please use the weekend, in between scarfing down your hamburgers, watching your sports, and splashing around at the pool, to poke around the site a bit. Then let us know what you think of the new design. Is it better or worse? What features do you like best? What did we miss including?

We did have a limited budget to work with, so we didn’t get to do everything we wanted. But we think we got the most important things taken care of — the stuff you’ve told us about previously.

To thank you for your help with the troubleshooting and for making this blog a success to begin with, we’ll be giving away some free stuff next week once the rollout is complete.

We’ll randomly pick winners from the comments we receive on this post – comments that point out issues we need to fix or that talk about what’s good and/or bad about the design.

Prizes on tap include:

• several CDs: Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp, Portable Sounds by tobyMac and A Beautiful Sound by Geoff Moore
• a large lime green Dri-Fit Nike Golf Polo Shirt with the Compassion logo on it
• a medium gray Compassion tee shirt
• a stainless steel Compassion water bottle

And one final thing, but on a different note:

We encourage you to read through the comments on Three Things All Sponsors Should Know; several of our country staff have added their thoughts on this topic.

We’ve gotten input from East Indonesia, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, East India and the Philippines. The thoughts in the post itself are good, too, so you should read that if you haven’t.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Remember when you answer each day’s HIV/AIDS question correctly, you are eligible to win a free CD – your choice of either Portable Sounds by tobyMac or Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. We’ll randomly choose a winner each day from the correct answers.

The answer to yesterday’s question is false.

ART is not a cure for HIV; rather ART prevents the virus from replicating in the body. By stopping HIV from making copies of itself, less virus occurs in the body, which in turn allows the immune system (T cells) to rebuild itself. A stronger immune system can then defend the body and keep a person fairly healthy.

Source: www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/treatment/index.htm, November 2008

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Remember when you answer each day’s HIV/AIDS question correctly, you are eligible to win a free CD – your choice of either Portable Sounds by tobyMac or Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. We’ll randomly choose a winner each day from the correct answers.

The answer to yesterday’s question is false.

HIV can be passed from a mother to her child in three ways: during pregnancy, during childbirth, or through the breast milk. Even though children may not be infected when they are born, they can still be infected later through their mother’s breast milk.

Simple drug interventions, however, can prevent mother-to-child transmission, which can greatly reduce the overall rate of HIV transmission.

Source: The Skeptic’s Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis by Dale Hanson Bourke (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Authentic Books, 2006), p. 15

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Remember when you answer each day’s HIV/AIDS question correctly, you are eligible to win a free CD – your choice of either Portable Sounds by tobyMac or Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. We’ll randomly choose a winner each day from the correct answers.

The answer to Friday’s question is 1,000.

During 2007, an average of 1,000 children worldwide became infected each day with HIV, the vast majority of them newborns. Many people living in poverty are never tested and are unaware of their HIV positive status, thus increasing the rate of transmission. An important focus of our AIDS Initiative is the prevention of mother-to-child transmission.

Source: 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic Executive Summary, pg.8

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Remember when you answer each day’s HIV/AIDS question correctly, you are eligible to win a free CD – your choice of either Portable Sounds by tobyMac or Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. We’ll randomly choose a winner each day from the correct answers.

The answer to Wednesday’s question is yes; a person with AIDS always has HIV.

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

A person may have HIV for many years without developing AIDS. An HIV-positive person is considered to have AIDS only when his or her white blood cell (CD4) count drops below the 200-350 range. In fact, until then, a person with HIV may not show symptoms of the infection.

However, an HIV-infected person is still able to transmit the disease to others and may develop AIDS at any time.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

Remember when you answer each day’s HIV/AIDS question correctly, you are eligible to win a free CD – your choice of either Portable Sounds by tobyMac or Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. We’ll randomly choose a winner each day from the correct answers.

Of the more than 2 million deaths worldwide in 2007 caused by AIDS, 72 percent of those occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.

That statistic shows the devastating toll AIDS is taking on the continent of Africa.

Source: 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic,Executive Summary, pp. 5, 18, http://www.unaids.org

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

If you answer that day’s question correctly, you’ll be eligible to win a free CD — your choice of either Portable Sounds by tobyMac or Beyond Measure by Jeremy Camp. We’ll randomly choose a winner each day from the correct answers.

Here’s the first question.

Tomorrow morning we’ll publish the answer to this question in the comment section of this post.

My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates