Group Updates

Philisa: This month Philisa finished their SANTA training and they have received their certificates. They did very well in the course and really enjoyed the training. Since they have finished they have been doing Mbizo(community meetings) awareness campaignes to let people in the communities know that they have received the training and that they are working in the communities. Their office is coming along nicely and will hopefully be finished by the end of the month.
Mdumbi: Lindelwa has been working hard with Mdumbi this month, training them in HIV treatment and how to use the patient's hospital card to better manage their care. This month 8 carers began their SANTA training and will be there for the next 6 weeks. Hopefully their training goes as well as it did for Philisa! Lately they have identified lots of OVCs in their communities who have no birth certificates and are not receiving grants. This means alot of work for the carers taking the children and their carers to Social Development to begin the process of getting the children registered. The carers feel that this job is so important that they will use their own money to take the chrildren to Social Development when the families are not willing to pay or can't afford the transport.
Siyakhula: This month they have identified 80 OVC to whom they are giving school uniforms. These uniforms will be given out at a party for the OVCs on the 8th of March and all the stakeholders in the area will be there for the presentation. Their drop in centre/soup kitchen for OVCs is operating everyday with an average of 200 kids coming everyday. Here the kids can get a well balanced meal everyday because often they don't get good food at home. The carers also help the kids with their homework at the drop in centre and counsel them about the problems they face everyday.
All of the groups have been reporting monthly to Social Development and we are working steadily to get their NPO applications processed so to bring them closer to getting funded. We are also still working at getting HBC kits from the AIDS Counsil. This week we are having our second HBC forum where we will meet with the leader of each group and collect their reports.