Thandukuphila Drop-In Centres

Thandukuphila is in northern KwaZulu-Natal and was started in 1996 by Mrs. Nancy Khuzwayo and two volunteer home based Carers to deliver an integrated programme to assist HIV/AIDS infected and affected families, especially the orphans. An ASAP partner since 2002, today their project reaches 1300 orphans and vulnerable children in over 18 surrounding rural communities. They now run two full-time Day Care centres serving 150 children under 6 years, a large drop-in centre catering to 1000 school children as well as coordinating a network of 30 Home Based Carers looking after 250 HIV/AIDS and TB patients.

"Through home visits in our township we encountered many family bread winners who were sick, unable to finish their TB treatments as they had no food to eat. We began helping clients to start making crafts and with skills development for income generation. Now we care for infected and affected HIV/AIDS orphans and vulnerable children, cooking them breakfast before school and lunch and help with their homework. On Saturdays, they come to the centre for skills development programmes. We have a daycare centre for 80 children and provide all our children with medicine. Our goal is establish a sustainable child support organisation that provides child care and counseling services; to strengthen income generating programmes, train youth in life skills development and build the capacity of community members to help themselves."

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Etafeni Playgroup Project

Traditional healer, Rose Mbude founded Etafeni in 1983 when she found children roaming the streets of Nyanga Township outside of Cape Town. Etafeni means 'open space', and Rose started to care for orphaned and vulnerable children by establishing backyard playgroups. Today the Etafeni group is comprised of 19 full-time volunteers running 5 Early Childhood Development centres caring for more than 300 orphans and vulnerable children. They coordinate outreach programmes to educate mothers on the importance of engaging in early childhood development practices, to support child-headed families in Nyanga and to provide care to families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

"Etafeni Playgroup works to use parents and concerned community members as volunteers. Soon after we started Etafeni, the mothers of the children realized the benefits their children were getting from this playgroup and began to offer their services, visiting homes in the community and teaching other mothers about early childhood development and the importance of playing with their children. The bond between a child and their mother or primary care giver is the single most important thing in that child's development into personhood. Their capacity for love, for surviving difficulties and negotiating life's transitions is developed at this early stage.

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Hlomelikusasa

In 1998 Boniswa Ngule, a trainer in First-Aid, founded Hlomelikusasa in the rural Eastern Cape. When ASAP partnered with them in 2002, Boniswa and her volunteer team of 35 were working out of a one-room shack in a church yard. Today, they co-ordinate a network of 80 Village Health Workers caring for and monitoring 1400 orphans & vulnerable children enrolled in 56 schools spanning a 70 km radius.

In response to inefficient nutrition schemes at schools and widespread hunger, Hlomelikusasa is installing vegetable gardens and water tanks at Village Health Worker Homes as well as providing hands-on agriculture training along with emergency nutrtion supplies. Today, they provide access to regular nutrition to 1400 orphans & vulnerable children. With comprehensive two-year training in Child & Youth Care Work from National Association of Child Care Workers, Village Healh Workers are applying accredited counseling skills in their work with orphans & vulnerable children.

"The aim of our organisation is to empower the orphans within the communities to create job opportunities for themselves to fight against poverty, unemployment and homelessness. We are concietizing youth, more especially orphans, through skills development training, awareness workshops and self-help projects to keep their human dignity through social growth and psychological liberation which we believe is a prerequisite to socio-economic development. Hlomelikusasa strives to ensure the involvement the community in HIV/AIDS, TB and general health education and supports Home Based Carers in community development. The aim if this project is to empower people with skills so they can establish self-help projects and help children at home in their community. To fight against disease, poverty and homelessness."

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Kakaretso Development and Training Trust

Qwa Qwa is one of the poorest areas of the Free State, with the second highest rate of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. In 1997, trained nurse, Mrs Pulane Cuefar, established Kakaretso with the aim of uplifting her community by addressing issues with a systemic approach.

Kakaretso networks support to 60 Early Childhood Development centres (ECD) in Qwa Qwa, and currently monitors 2900 vulnerable and orphaned children in their care. Some ECD centres are linked to income-generating projects that provide skills training and business education to adults. They provide education on HIV/AIDS, Women's Rights and constitutional rights in a multi-level effort to enable self-sufficiency and promote the eradication of poverty in their community. Kakaretso also runs an Anti-AIDS youth Home Based Care programme reaching 15 to 25 year olds.

"ECD centres mainly function in privately owned buildings varying from zinc shacks to simple brick structures. In the majority of cases, a single room or garage is utilized for Educare purposes. Despite physical and financial limitations, women are keen and enjoy their work. The training and transfer of skills to formerly unemployed women empower them to generate an income through the running of Early Childhood Development programmes in their homes.

"Orphans are absorbed creating Safety for them. No longer being abused no more children loitering in the streets. Children get nutrition food provided at the centres. Practitioners are aware of orphan's status and provide special care, but orphans are not differentiated from other children as they are absorbed by the community."

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Zwelitsha Youth Farm Project

Zwelitsha is a rural village that until recently, was particularly isolated because of bad roads. The area has been struck hard by a lack of AIDS education and condom distribution. The community's response has been to absorb the AIDS orphans. The Zwelitsha project is a fantastic example of 'Small is Beautiful'. A core group of 13 youth work daily in a large vegetable garden that provides nutrition as well as income from the sale of produce that is used to support the schooling of AIDS orphans. ASAP has recently completed installation of a borehole to bring water to the village, and the youth are planning to build a roadside stall to sell fresh produce.

"Our main objectives are to pay school fees for the orphans in our community, to eradicate unemployment, poverty and crime. The Chief Morapedi Lehata, has given us a field and he motivated the youth to be involved in community upliftment. The parents are also supporting the project; the women help to irrigate, carry the water and remove weeds. Our motto is forward ever and backward never."

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Zamokuhle

Beledale is a rural village in the Eastern Cape in a cluster of 3 villages where approximately 4000 people live in dire poverty. The Zamokuhle CBO is a group of 13 women who work to provide nourishment, school fees, uniforms and care for orphans and vulnerable children. With support from ASAP, Zamokuhle women have recently completed building a hut from which they operate a nutrition programme for more than 80 orphans and vulnerable children. The hut is located in the garden of the Health department clinic. Working with the Department of Water Affairs and their local municipality, a new borehole has enabled them to establish a large vegetable garden.

Until now, we haven't had any water. For a while there were two trucks a day with water for 7 villages. There is even a government programme to divert water from rivers and dams, but that programme is seriously underfunded and we still had no water in these villages until now." Mr. Ntsana, Ward Counselor.

Baphumelele

Baphumelele is a wonderful example of how a one-woman initiative that started in a shack has organically grown into a shining centre of excellence in the poverty-struck township of Khayelitsha.

Rosalia Mashale started caring for the young children of working mothers around her in 1985. Twenty years later, Baphumelele provides a caring home for more than 110 abandoned and abused orphaned children. Baphumelele also has a 'step-down' clinic for babies and toddlers infected by HIV/AIDS, and provides in-service training in home-based care and early child development to a network of women volunteers.

In 1992 Rosalia was sponsored to go to Germany where she trained as a Waldorf Kindergarten teacher. She returned to start a Waldorf kindergarten which today is self sufficient and has 300 children in attendance. "This method is very holistic and with all the abuse in Khayalitsha, these children need something warm to bring them together and it is very healing. It has helped us bring back our culture of storytelling, which we lost with westernization."

In 1983, Rosalia Mashale was unemployed and living in her cousin's shack in Site B when she began taking in children who were playing in the dump nearby. "I love children and I felt pity all the time because some of the children had diarrhea and some had sores, so I invited them into the shack and I washed them and we sang songs." A neighbor had a shop and gave her bread, soon she was looking after 15 children. "They gave me a great sense of joy and from that moment I never felt the pain and boredom of unemployment."

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