NEWS
Beneficiaries
News/Events
Links
2009 RivLife Community Centre
1.OVC Care- Drop-in-Centre
The Drop-in-centre catered for 50 OVC’s everyday this year. These children receive cooked meals, homework supervision, laundry services, clothing, school uniforms and playing facilities on a daily basis. There is a retired school teacher who helps with homework supervision. 24 of these children do performance arts like stage plays, poems, songs and life skills discussions. One volunteer from Scripture Union and Nozipho from Rivlife conduct life skills discussions with these children every Wednesday. This helps to distress since most the children are living with their old grandparents and some with terminally parents. The centre also provides counseling services, food parcels to the children’s families during home visits. The children’s ministry from the River of Life church treats 200 children once every month, to a fun-filled party and gives them party packs. The children attending at the Drop-in-centre received stationery packs at the beginning of the year.
Morning Breakfast
26 children living in the nearest community (Cinderella A) gets morning breakfast before they go to school. This was established to help children cope in school and for their physical growth, since breakfast is the most important meal for one’s wellbeing.
2.Direct household support
The social worker and the ten volunteers are responsible for supporting and monitoring the households of the children attending at the Drop-in-Centre and the home based care clients. The assessments are done by doing home visits to ascertain the material, physical, social and emotional wellbeing of household members. Some of the support services offered to the community include the following;
·Home-based care-palliative care
There are ten volunteers helping 270, home based care clients with this service. The ten dedicated and hardworking volunteers help to provide effective home-based care programmes like bed bathing, treatment buddies (ARVs and DOT for TB), and psychological support is provided by the social worker.
·Food/ clothing parcel
Material support is given to clients in dire poverty conditions and to those that are terminally ill. RivLife aims to provide 40 food parcels every month; however this will depend on the availability of resources to do the distribution. 200 clients on the database also receive a substantial food parcel at the end of the year. RivLife also distribute second clothing to the clients in need. The children attending at the drop-in-centre receive clothes once every quarter from donations by well-wishers. During the course of the year 530 food parcels were distributed to households in dire need
·Food gardens
The volunteers also help the HBC clients to make door gardens, for the clients to get nutritional vegetables every time. RivLife supported the establishment of 40 household food gardens this year. However some of the gardens were not sustained because of lack of expertise on gardening in the households.
·School Uniforms Distribution
20 OVC’s received uniforms through the partnership between RivLife and (CINDI) Singhatha school uniform project. This helps children in dire poverty to afford decent school uniforms.
·Documentation Applications
179 community members in Ward 34 were helped to apply for IDs and birth certificates at the community centre through the two-day home affairs mobile unit. Some clients were referred with social worker’s report on abandoned children by the social worker to Home Affairs.
3.Welfare
The main focus in RivLife’s community care model is the emotional wellbeing and development of the OVC’s and their caregivers. This is the core responsibility of our social worker. The social worker is also responsible for the material wellbeing of the clients by helping them apply for the necessary social grants. The social worker also liaises with the Home Affairs mobile unit, so that people in Ward 34 can apply for necessary identity documents at the Community Centre. The social worker provides counseling to clients during home visits and walk-in-clients. Pastors at the centre also take some time to visit the clients. Prayers are done during home visits. Home based care clients are counseled in relation to hopes, fears related to HIV/AIDS.
Welfare Statistics
·Referrals
Department of Social Security 85
Department of Home Affairs 5
Mountain Rise Police Station 28
Child Welfare 42
Department of Social Development 37
·Documentation application
Number of people who applied 179
·Individual consultations
Counseling services 82
Home visits 84
·Group Interventions
Therapeutic weekends 1
Children who went on therapeutic weekends 10
Life skills workshops 32
Children who attended the workshops 24
Holiday club 1
4.Training
RivLife organized a number of training workshops for staff and volunteers. Below is a brief outline of each training workshop:
Volunteer training
·Memory Box-train the facilitator- 10 volunteers were trained by Sinomlando facilitators to
be Memory Box facilitators during the course of the year. This training equipped them with
knowledge of doing memory box activities with caregivers and individual children
·Life skills/per education-train the facilitator- RivLife partnered with Scripture Union in
providing life skills training for 10 youths to become facilitators. Some of these youths with
Scripture Union staff are involved in life skills training at the local schools
·DOT - TB treatment facilitators- 15 volunteers were trained by the TB free personnel to be
DOT supporters and tracers in Ward 34
·Child Abuse- 22 women from ward 34, including the volunteers were trained on the ways
of helping a victim and the available resources in their communities.
The Drop-in-centre catered for 50 OVC’s everyday this year. These children receive cooked meals, homework supervision, laundry services, clothing, school uniforms and playing facilities on a daily basis. There is a retired school teacher who helps with homework supervision. 24 of these children do performance arts like stage plays, poems, songs and life skills discussions. One volunteer from Scripture Union and Nozipho from Rivlife conduct life skills discussions with these children every Wednesday. This helps to distress since most the children are living with their old grandparents and some with terminally parents. The centre also provides counseling services, food parcels to the children’s families during home visits. The children’s ministry from the River of Life church treats 200 children once every month, to a fun-filled party and gives them party packs. The children attending at the Drop-in-centre received stationery packs at the beginning of the year.
Morning Breakfast
26 children living in the nearest community (Cinderella A) gets morning breakfast before they go to school. This was established to help children cope in school and for their physical growth, since breakfast is the most important meal for one’s wellbeing.
2.Direct household support
The social worker and the ten volunteers are responsible for supporting and monitoring the households of the children attending at the Drop-in-Centre and the home based care clients. The assessments are done by doing home visits to ascertain the material, physical, social and emotional wellbeing of household members. Some of the support services offered to the community include the following;
·Home-based care-palliative care
There are ten volunteers helping 270, home based care clients with this service. The ten dedicated and hardworking volunteers help to provide effective home-based care programmes like bed bathing, treatment buddies (ARVs and DOT for TB), and psychological support is provided by the social worker.
·Food/ clothing parcel
Material support is given to clients in dire poverty conditions and to those that are terminally ill. RivLife aims to provide 40 food parcels every month; however this will depend on the availability of resources to do the distribution. 200 clients on the database also receive a substantial food parcel at the end of the year. RivLife also distribute second clothing to the clients in need. The children attending at the drop-in-centre receive clothes once every quarter from donations by well-wishers. During the course of the year 530 food parcels were distributed to households in dire need
·Food gardens
The volunteers also help the HBC clients to make door gardens, for the clients to get nutritional vegetables every time. RivLife supported the establishment of 40 household food gardens this year. However some of the gardens were not sustained because of lack of expertise on gardening in the households.
·School Uniforms Distribution
20 OVC’s received uniforms through the partnership between RivLife and (CINDI) Singhatha school uniform project. This helps children in dire poverty to afford decent school uniforms.
·Documentation Applications
179 community members in Ward 34 were helped to apply for IDs and birth certificates at the community centre through the two-day home affairs mobile unit. Some clients were referred with social worker’s report on abandoned children by the social worker to Home Affairs.
3.Welfare
The main focus in RivLife’s community care model is the emotional wellbeing and development of the OVC’s and their caregivers. This is the core responsibility of our social worker. The social worker is also responsible for the material wellbeing of the clients by helping them apply for the necessary social grants. The social worker also liaises with the Home Affairs mobile unit, so that people in Ward 34 can apply for necessary identity documents at the Community Centre. The social worker provides counseling to clients during home visits and walk-in-clients. Pastors at the centre also take some time to visit the clients. Prayers are done during home visits. Home based care clients are counseled in relation to hopes, fears related to HIV/AIDS.
Welfare Statistics
·Referrals
Department of Social Security 85
Department of Home Affairs 5
Mountain Rise Police Station 28
Child Welfare 42
Department of Social Development 37
·Documentation application
Number of people who applied 179
·Individual consultations
Counseling services 82
Home visits 84
·Group Interventions
Therapeutic weekends 1
Children who went on therapeutic weekends 10
Life skills workshops 32
Children who attended the workshops 24
Holiday club 1
4.Training
RivLife organized a number of training workshops for staff and volunteers. Below is a brief outline of each training workshop:
Volunteer training
·Memory Box-train the facilitator- 10 volunteers were trained by Sinomlando facilitators to
be Memory Box facilitators during the course of the year. This training equipped them with
knowledge of doing memory box activities with caregivers and individual children
·Life skills/per education-train the facilitator- RivLife partnered with Scripture Union in
providing life skills training for 10 youths to become facilitators. Some of these youths with
Scripture Union staff are involved in life skills training at the local schools
·DOT - TB treatment facilitators- 15 volunteers were trained by the TB free personnel to be
DOT supporters and tracers in Ward 34
·Child Abuse- 22 women from ward 34, including the volunteers were trained on the ways
of helping a victim and the available resources in their communities.
Beneficiaries