A Helping Hand
The Challenge - Few jobs, little income in our target group, no welfare support so a high level of wide-spread poverty.
Our Primary Target Group:
Orphans, the elderly, those living with disabilities, and the AIDS-affected....
Our Reception area is the usual point of contact with the community. Here many come to share their challenges, and each plea is respected and considered. Most commonly, it's hunger, but there’s also concerns with education, housing, roofing, small business capital, school uniforms, or needing formula for orphaned babies. From these circumstances, we assess and prepare lists for our Food Programme, Education Sponsorship, borehole repair and other community projects.
Help is issued where possible and appropriate, though always with the concept of enabling work rather than affirming dependency. It’s specially tailored to circumstances and aims to help individuals and their families with practical solutions towards lifestyle improvement or emergency need.
Each month there’s Food Tokens issued to the acutely vulnerable and frail - usually the elderly, for most of the year. Alongside, our Cash-for-Work Scheme provides small opportunities for the able-bodied to earn to support their own families, and our Emergency Fund gives financial help in crisis situations - often ambulance transport for palliative care or accident.
Hundreds are helped every month, but behind each statistic is a face and a story.....
Memory
Memory, 12yrs old, came to us desperate for a school uniform as she had been "chased away" from school without one. Her father died 2 years ago and her mother went to Mozambique to seek food and hadn't come back. She was in the care of her brother (15yrs) who fended for them both by buying, roasting, and selling small bags of peanuts.
So we had a uniform made for her, paid an outstanding one-off school fee, gave her a blanket, repaired the roof of the house she shares with her brother, and added them to our Food Programme.
Small things, but life-changing for Memory!
Then there’s practical goods - mosquito nets for vulnerable children, sleeping mats for the elderly, clothing, plastic sheeting for roofing, glasses, blankets, vegetable & tree seeds, pesticides, moringa powder for those at nutritional at risk, vegetables grown on site, livestock, tools for a business—and the list goes on.....
Giving out blankets, vegetables & mosquito nets
