Lulisandla Kumntwana
LULISANDLA KUMNTWANA = REACH OUT TO THE CHILD (SIM SA Project Number ZA97398)
NPO Reg No: 000-338; PBO Reg No: 18/11/13/1230
This is a community based outreach project of the Mseleni Children’s Home, working with orphans and vulnerable children in the Umhlabuyalingana and Big Five Municipalities in Umkhanyakude.
The aim is to share the love of Christ with orphans and vulnerable children and their families, responding to the Biblical instruction to care for the poor and needy, in particular James 1v27, to visit orphans in their distress. The aim is also to encourage and to work alongside Christians and local churches to see the need of orphans and vulnerable children, and to support and to facilitate them in their efforts to fulfill the call of the Lord to minister to them.
“Lulisandla Kumntwana”, started working in June 2002. Currently 20 staff and many volunteers cover an area of about 30 kms wide and 125 kms long, with a population of about 95,000. 5393 orphans are on the project’s data base, and out of those about 3467 receive some kind of help.
The foundation of the project is the network of Family Support Teams, made up of Christians drawn from local churches. 56 teams with about 350 volunteers visit orphan families on a regular basis & offer practical, social emotional and spiritual help. Four coordinators work with these teams, meeting with them once a month for feedback, planning, and praying.
The program is a registered fostering agency, which means that children are assisted to access birth and death documents and IDs, foster parents are screened, home situations investigated, cases taken to the Children’s Court, children are placed in foster care, and then assisted to apply for the foster child grant. Foster placements are supervised.
Amongst many other monthly activities the program offers psycho-social support workshops which help orphans to deal with the emotional trauma of losing their parents. The workshops also give life skills training. Foster parents workshops take place as well as memory box work with the orphans and a support group for HIV+ teens.
Pastoral coordinators counsel individuals and families, help staff and volunteers to develop their spiritual ministry and assist with workshops.
The program works closely with the local schools to further care for the needs of the orphans as well as identifying new orphans. 21 After School Clubs offer orphans in the school help with homework, games and crafts and life skills. Careers Days in High Schools are facilitated. Five youth clubs run a weekly program for youth in general. Some of these clubs have started income generating projects. Inter club competitions and outings add to the fun factor.
OBJECTIVES
1. To recruit, train and support teams of Christians from local churches who will regularly visit and minister to orphans and their carers practically, spiritually, emotionally and socially.
2. To encourage the spiritual development of team members from local churches through teaching and training in evangelism and discipleship.
3. To establish and run a fostering agency so as to be able to place children in foster care, or formalize such placements, by opening Court Enquiries, applying for foster grants, supervising placements, and applying for renewals
4. To offer orphans and vulnerable children psycho-social support.
5. To ensure orphans are able to access and benefit from education
6. To establish a relief fund which can be used to offer help such as food, clothing and house repairs to those in dire need.
7. To undertake youth work in order to develop the life skills and spiritual growth of youth in general, and orphans and vulnerable children in particular.
8. To mobilize the community in order to increase awareness of children’s rights and the needs of orphans.
9. To assist older orphans by helping them gain access to tertiary education, skills training and income generating activities.
10. To establish links and working relationships with other NGOs and Government Departments so as to work together in assisting orphans and vulnerable children.
11. To monitor and evaluate the project, and to undertake research into its effectiveness.
12. Lulisandla Kumntwana will not discriminate in the services rendered whether in terms of race, gender, colour, religion or political belief
Teens Group at a Psycho Social Support Workshop
BACKGROUND
Lulisandla Kumntwana (which means “Reach Out to the Child”) is a community outreach project of Mseleni Children’s Home. The Children’s Home itself was established in the 1950s and is registered with the Department of Social Development as a children’s home caring for children in need of care in terms of the Children’s Act. The children range in age from birth through to 21 and most have been abandoned or abused.
Realising that our community was going to have an increasing number of orphans because of AIDS it was decided that community based care was the right response since children should only be placed in institutional care if there is no alternative. Within our area the extended family still functions well, and it was believed that the emphasis should be on giving support to the community in general and the extended families of orphans in particular so that these children could be cared for within their own families.
Lulisandla Kumntwana started working in June 2002. We work in the community with local churches caring for children who have been orphaned. Most of these have been orphaned because of AIDS. Our approach is that first we contact lots of local churches in an area & we present the Biblical call to minister to those in need & we offer an opportunity to do this through joining a Lulisandla Kumntwana team. Those who want to do so are trained in workshops & the aim is that each local area should have a team of Christians from different churches who care for the orphans in their community. So far we have 56 teams doing this, which involve about 350 people working as volunteers.
The team members are local people who live in the same community as the children who have been orphaned. Some of them have orphans in their own homes. They are people who themselves have very little, most of them relying on what they can grow in their fields & selling handcrafts.
The team members visit the orphans living near them at least once a week, often more frequently, & help them practically, spiritually & emotionally. What they do varies depending on the situation – they might, for example, help plough the family fields, clean the home, teach the children handcrafts, or to mend their clothes, help cook, take them food from their own homes, sit & talk & be a caring adult, take them to clinic if they are sick, supervise homework, advocate for them at the local schools, mend their houses, take them to church, read the Bible & pray with them. The majority of these orphans live with a relative – maybe an older sibling, an aunt, or a grandparent. Those relatives of course also need help – their resources are stretched & they themselves have been bereaved.
Thobani and his family – Memory Box work
The team members also help us to identify those orphan families which are in particular need. Then we go with them to distribute food parcels. The aim is that families should be assisted to access the foster child grant, but in the meantime those in dire need are given help. There are also a number of older orphans who are not eligible for the government grant because they are over 18, but it is very important that they complete school so that they can become independent. So these also are given help. Each food parcel contains 12,5kg mealie meal, 10kg samp, 5kg beans, 5kg peanuts, 500ml cooking oil, 2,5kg sugar & a bar of soap.
Most years we have also bought seeds, gardening tools and insecticide so that team members could assist the orphan families to plant food gardens in their own homes both as a source of food and of income if they do well. Some teams have “done their own thing” as well. Several teams have established community gardens so that they can raise funds to offer extra assistance. We have been able to help two of these expand into hydroponics projects which they are running together with some of the older orphans. These projects are providing the children with vegetables & also being sold to provide funds help children with school expenses. Another team has established a project making fabric softener.
We have four Foster Care Coordinators whose main task is to work with the teams – they meet with each team every month so that they can report back, plan, discuss & pray together. Each child has a Child Action Plan so that work done with that child is recorded and it is a tool for identifying needs and planning how to meet them. The coordinators do a lot of individual work with the orphans too.
The coordinators work closely with local schools throughout the area. We assist orphans who are not able to pay school fees to gain exemption. We also provide school uniforms as lack of uniform is a major reason children are not able to go to school. Each year about 200 children have received uniforms. The coordinators help teachers and school governing bodies to understand the problems orphans face & encourage them to report problems to us. We have been successful in getting all the schools to appoint one teacher as OVC Liaison Officer so that the teacher becomes the link person with LK in the school. We have found that the schools regularly contact the coordinators to report on a problem with a particular orphan, or to call us in of there is a new orphan family.
Since July 2007 we have been running After Schools Clubs for orphans in 21 schools. These clubs meet twice a week after school. Each club has two facilitators. The children have help with homework, play games and do craft work & and also have some teaching on life skills. The schools have been extremely positive about the effectiveness of these clubs, reporting that many of the orphans used to lack self confidence, to lag behind in their school work, and not to participate in class activities and discussions. Now they say that these same children have a high self esteem, participate, and are doing well in school. There are about 1000 children in total who attend these clubs.
Since 2008 we have also been running Careers Days in local schools, aiming to help youth in general, and orphans in particular with more information about possible careers, how to apply to tertiary institutions, and loans and bursaries. 17 schools were reached in 2009. We assist many of our orphans with the application process, and the fee to put in the application. Others have been assisted with money for transport to interviews. This year 30 orphans received help to do short vocational courses, or had some help with university fees.
