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GREENSBORO - The child Jane Collins is able to follow in virtual reality to a clinic gets the dreaded diagnosis that already took the little girl's mother and father, right before her very own eyes.

HIV.

"It touched my heart and it tore me up," said Collins, a member of the HIV/AIDS ministry team at Westover Church.

Westover this week will sponsor World Vision's "Step into Africa" exhibit, a multimedia interactive production following the lives of children affected by HIV and AIDS in the world's hardest-hit region.

"You could feel what they went through in going to the clinic and hearing their diagnosis," said Collins, who has traveled to the community in Zimbabwe. "They're real children. They're real stories."

Sub-Saharan Africa has about 25 million people infected with HIV, which is two-thirds of the world's total, according to World Vision and statistics from the United Nations. Using MP3 players, visitors to the free exhibit walk through a replica of an African village as they listen to the voices of HIV-infected children - Kombo, Babirye, Emmanuel and Mathabo.

Greensboro is one of just two North Carolina stops this year for the production, which takes about 30 minutes to walk through. Collins saw the exhibit, also on display at the 2006 Global AIDS Conference in Toronto, when she and two other members of the HIV/AIDS ministry traveled to Maryland to preview the show.

The exhibit, which takes up a tractor-trailer, is being set up in the church's theater. It focuses on Zimbabwe but can help re-energize the conversation locally, organizers say.

"Most people have a casual awareness of AIDS," said Rod Beale, who went to Maryland with his wife, Karen, and Collins.

"I equate the AIDS pandemic as the leprosy of scripture. It's the intimidation. It's the uncertainty. There's fear, but when we know more, that changes."

Westover has taken an interest in the epidemic globally and locally by purchasing an orphanage that will be run by an organization called Hands of Hope in Zimbabwe. The congregation, among other things, has invested in a goat ministry there so affected nursing mothers can use goat's milk instead of the breast milk that can pass the disease to their infants.

In Greensboro, the church helps support Higher Ground, a ministry that provides services to people who are infected and sometimes lack support.

Other local faith groups also have HIV/AIDS ministries.

"Some people here in Greensboro cannot tell their families because they will be shunned, kicked out," Collins said. "It's been our vision to show Christ to people who are hurting.

"Jesus went into the village and touched them," Collins said of the intimacy of Jesus amid the lepers. "He didn't stand aside and say, 'You're healed.'"

Organizers also hope the exhibit will give the community a chance to reflect and respond to the global epidemic, which is seeing higher infection rates in this country as well.

"If someone is developing a heart for this, they can get connected in Greensboro and globally," said Wes Ward, the church's director of local ministries.

At the end of the exhibit, World Vision and Westover offer AIDS awareness information and ways to help affected children, such as sponsorships of orphans, and "giving kits" to raise money for items in the nonprofit's gift catalog, which includes things like caregiver training.

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com