Foster Care Development

Project One

• Team members trained a group, of mostly young adults, in the knowledge and concerns regarding HIV/AIDS victims as well as how to encourage action and change of mindset within their community.
• Some of these trained volunteers, working in Harare (a sector of Khayelitsha), are making use of a Church in the community as a base from which to interact with AIDS sufferers.
• Most of the people that they have reached out to, have no means of paying for medical treatment.
• In due course, it was also ascertained that the clients' HIV status had been revealed only to our volunteers, within this safe environment, due to stigmatization from members of the community towards those who openly declare their HIV status.
• The volunteers, many of whom are unemployed, recently received honoraria for their services and together decided to distribute the money that they had received to their most destitute clients.
• Our team members provide supervision, support and on-the-job training to the volunteers.
• The community has been amazed by the care and support shown by our volunteers to their family members who are infected, or have died with little support from their families and community.
• One of the most important challenges of running projects such as these is to empower volunteers from each community to take responsibility for the problems of their own community.
• This aspect of our work will gain impetus given the current HIV crisis and the need for job creation.
• Through the training and mobilization of volunteers, jobs will be created and community members will be empowered to combat the devastating effects of AIDS on our communities by means of education, care and support.

Project Two

Holiday Activities are run for foster children and other vulnerable children. Each day of the holidays is marked by several activities for children such as:

• promoting use of community libraries
• touring of Simonstown and ships of the Navy at the Naval Base
• trips over Ou Kaapseweg (an area of the mountainside) as a stop at the summit offers wide horizons to children who have previously only seen along the streets whey they live and the way to school
• Some of the activities include workshops on:
  
  
• Sexual development
• HIV/AIDS
• Conflict management
• These special events play an important part in the recovery process of each child as many of them suffer:
  
  
• from low self esteem
• difficulties in forging strong and lasting relationships
• coming to terms with never / seldom seeing their birth families
• depression and deprivation
• Assistance is also given, where relevant and appropriate, to foster children in preparing for and coping with adolescence, especially in view of the fact that most foster