Hlomelikusasa
In 1998, Boniswa Ngule, a first aid trainer, founded Hlomelikusasa to provide improved healthcare for the widespread rural communities in the vicinity of Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape. This area was formerly designated as part of the Transkei homeland and the people living here inherited the apartheid legacy of a staggering lack of basic infrastructure and services which continues to perpetuate endemic poverty and unemployment; poor nutrition, education and healthcare.
When ASAP started working with Hlomelikusasa in 2003, Boniswa and her team of 35 volunteers worked out of a disused one-room shack in a churchyard. The first year they registered 140 orphans in school. Today, they co-ordinate a network of almost 200 trained Village Health Workers providing broad-based care to 2800 orphans and vulnerable children.
The rugged, remote hills of this area and the physical isolation of its scattered villages present a unique challenge to a community-based organization such as Hlomelikusasa. They operate in a radius of 70km around the town of Mount Frere, reaching a multitude of small settlements and networking with more than 50 different schools. Their solution has included identifying motivated, unemployed women from as many villages as possible who have been trained as Child Care workers and Home-based carers.
ASAP fully supports Hlomelikusasa in their development of effective education, nutrition and agriculture, health and psycho-social programmes. Organic gardening training, Project Management and Child and Youth Care work is provided on an ongoing basis.
In 2008, there was an increase in child-headed families and ASAP conducted assessments of 69 families in the Mt Frere area. This has helped us determine Coping, Acute and Emergency vulnerability level households and the urgency of the intervention required. The village health workers are engaged in the follow-up for eligibility of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) to access government grants, school, uniforms, nutrition and basic needs. 60 gardens have been installed to date with fencing, tools, seedlings and nitrogen-replacing trees to establish sustainable nutrition for orphans and vulnerable children.
In their own words …
"The aim of our organizsation is to empower the orphans within the communities to create job opportunities for themselves to fight against poverty, unemployment and homelessness. We are making the youth conscious, 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 of 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."
| 2003 | 2008 | |
| ASAP Grants | R10,000 | R632,797 |
| No. Of OVC | 0 | 2800 |
| Drop In Centres | 1 | 17 |
| Village Health Workers | 35 | 192 |
