April 2010

On the 26th of April, 2010, the Methodist Church from Ngqeleni were supposed to come to visit Siyakhula HBC group. They ended up, however, post-poning the visit. Social workers were interested to know how many people are coming and what the reason for the visit is.
Nkosana from 2540 NGO came to our last meeting. He decided to meet again to discuss a way forward. We check how many OVC's receive social services and how many need access to those servces.
This month we are having our Transcape HIV meeting with Grace, our new member. Mdumbi has done door to door campaigns and identified a lot of HIV positive people who are not attending support groups and are not taking ARTs. Some have even formed a new support group called Dumani Support Group.
Siyakhula had a funeral for a client of theirs who was 2 years old, HIV positive. She was abandoned by his mom at Social Development to social worker, Ncanywa. Ncanywa tried to find out who the care giver is for that baby in his village. They tried to find caregiver Jonga, but she stayed for 2 months away somewhere. The child passed away. Members of the family did not want to have a funeral, but Jonga spent her own money for the funeral. All the caregivers are supporting Jonga in this decision. This should not happen again though. If the family does not want to bury, the caregivers must call Municipality.
On the 30th of April, Mdumbi had a big awareness campaign in their community. Their aim was to show and tell community members what they are doing as home based carers. They have fundraised R1000 for this event for catering and hiring a big tent. Caregivers from Ward 25 were also present to inform the community on their happenings.