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 Home Overseas Projects Southern Africa Projects
Community development with HIV orphans and vulnerable children
HIV in southern Africa
Community Fundraising In 2000 a group of mainly South African-born Australians came together to do something in response to the impact of HIV on children in South Africa. They developed their own identity, taking the name Boomerang Project and after discussing with a range of Australian agencies, decided to ask for an alliance with Union Aid Abroad- APHEDA. We worked together in soliciting and assessing a range of possible projects, and selected the Rehoboth Trust in Murchison, near port Shepstone on the southern Coast of the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The volunteers at Rehoboth wanted to develop a solution for the babies who were left when their mothers died of AIDS at the local hospital, or who were found abandoned on the beach. They had the vision of a self-sustaining farm village which could provide a loving foster care environment with trained "house-mothers" for up to 48 babies and toddlers, affected by HIV, and without surviving family members in the local communities who could give them homes. Without having an option of going to a caring environment, the babies at the Murchison hospital would have died. Now the Rehoboth village has 24 babies and children, some attending local school, and 7 on anti-retroviral medications. There are five functioning housing units and two being built, a crèche, a care unit, a clinic, a bus, play and sports areas, as well as areas for cooking, volunteers and for training. The farm produces a range of crops. The Rehoboth foster care village is regarded as a model for community acre of AIDS orphans, and provides training to assist people in impoverished local rural communities meet the education, care and support challenges posed by the epidemic. Since the start of the project, due to some very successful fundraising events, and the generosity of many donors, and in particular one family, over $300,000 has been sent to Rehoboth. African Heritage African Heritage is a fundraising group of African women in Australia, who through African art shows and fashion parades have raised funds to develop HIV children's support services at Bethesda House (a care facility for orphans with HIV) at the Carl Sithole Children's Services Center in Soweto, near Johannesburg. Supported by the Salvation Army, The centre now has a foster care center for vulnerable youth, an orphanage for children with HIV, a crèche, a community clinic, income generation skills training, and a community primary school. Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA sent $19,000 donated by African Heritage to the Bethesda House. Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has also transferred from African Heritage donations, $9,498 to Vana Vedu ("our children" in Shona), a project to support at-risk children in the City of Chegutu in Zimbabwe. The project supports 98 children (aged 6 months to 16 years) who have lost parents, mainly to AIDS. Most live with older siblings or grandparents, and attend school, but don't have money for food or clothes or books or transport. They come to the Vana Vedu centre each day for food, for after school learning activities, for recreation, for education about HIV and health issues, as well as counselling and emotional support. The center is an old workers' cottage, run by Pastor and Mrs Mamutse, and a local board, who give shelter in the center for several dozen of the homeless children. Educo Africa Educo, based in Cape Town, gives leadership training for at-risk youth from disadvantaged communities and training fro adults to work with youth. This program is called Siyavuka ("wake up"). Educo also runs specialist training on youth and environmental education, and around HIV, its psychosocial impact on youth, and on how to build skills in care giving. With an agreement between Educo and Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA, Australian donors can support youth training projects in the Cape. In 2006, a group of donors is supporting a special course session with youth from Australia and from the community of Goedgedacht, near Stellenbosch. Since July 2005, Union Aid Abroad has sent donations of $15,725 to Educo Africa. Ons Plek The word "Ons Plek" means "our place" in Afrikaans, which with Xhosa is one of the two the main languages of working class communities in the Cape. Ons Plek is a program for girls on the streets downtown in Cape Town, who are very vulnerable to sexual exploitation, violence and HIV. Ons Plek gives shelter, counselling and education to girls so they can resume schooling or train for jobs. Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has an agreement to support vocational training with Ons Plek, and donations of $3,000 were sent in July 2006. EduCompass An initiative of Australians who were born and raised in the Cape Flats, near Cape Town, hoping to help provide a better future for the children growing up in those communities nowadays. EduCompass Australia is registered as a non-profit company, (CFN 18354) with the slogan "Feeding Education". EduCompass in Australian and South Africa have entered into agreements with Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA concerning support for some of their projects. EduCompass Community Development in Cape Town is an initiative of community volunteers who are concerned that children are unable to stay and school and learn, because they come from homes without enough light, heat, shelter, safety or food. Unemployment in these townships is very high, and incomes are low. Many parents have died from TB, HIV or violence, and children depend on aunts, grandparents and older siblings. Children can be vulnerable to unsafe sex, alcohol drugs and petrol, and violence. EduCompass works with 17 government schools in the areas of Grassy Park, Retreat and Steenberg, providing supplementary nutrition for schoolchildren, life skills education to parents and students, additional learning supplies and stationery, healthy recreational activities, and developing community leadership on how to protect vulnerable children. EduCompass educational competence and support services reach 70% of the primary school children in the Cape Flats. In 2006 they want to build food gardens alongside schools to educate children about nutrition and agriculture. In August 2006, $10,900 was sent for EduCompass community development activities. In the same month, a delegation from the Maritime Union of Australia, taking part in a congress of the International Transport Workers' Federation in South Africa, was able to visit four of the schools with EduCompass, and delegates report to their fellow union members that it was a very significant experience for them to see how working class communities live in South Africa. They have ambitious plans to assist this and other southern African projects through their Tas Bull Memorial International Aid Committee and Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA. Missionvale Missionvale is a squatter community of 130,000 people near the center of town in Port Elizabeth, now part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro in South Africa's Eastern Cape province. Missionvale has grown rapidly: in 1987 Missionvale was home to only 7,000 people. There are 16 taps for the 130,000 people, and no electricity. Most of the people, who have come from all over South Africa and its neighbouring countries, are not legally registered to receive welfare, health and education services. There is over 80% unemployment, and few have good English language literacy to get jobs outside the community. A comprehensive local development organization, Missionvale Care Center, has been working for two decades, providing a local "bridging" school for children who can't get into the government school, a local clinic, skills training in employment generating activities, a food gardening program, training for home care workers to visit those with AIDS, TB and cancer. Other community donations In recent years one-off special purpose allocations of donations have been made to SA satirist, Pieter Dirk Uys' HIV youth education project in Darling ($10,545), to the Nkosi Johnson AIDS Foundation, to the Friends of Claude Ho supporting children in Malawi, (now supported through the National Council of Churches in Australia), and to the Red Cross Children's Hospital in Cape Town ($4,000 in March 2006). Soley Productions, which brings South African culture to Australia, has assisted with donations from gala cultural events to Ons Plek, EduCompass, and the Children's Hospital in Cape Town. |
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