A Project Hope intern's work for children in South Africa

Cristian Greenwood, a recent graduate from Southampton University, talks about his background and how he came to be working with Project HOPE UK on a 6 month internship:

“Although I studied Applied Social Sciences at university, specialising in Anthropology, and want to pursue a career in International Development, my interest in the inequalities among different communities of the globe goes back to my childhood. I’m half Colombian, and it was on a family holiday to Colombia when I was eleven years old, that I became fully aware of the differences between the lives of people in developed countries and those in other parts of the world. On a visit to a prehistoric site in a remote mountain area, a group of young native children tried to sell us fossils, for which they spent all day digging on the mountainside in dangerous conditions. The contrast between their lives and mine was so great that the incident has stuck in my memory ever since, and from it came my inspiration to try and make a difference to the lives of people less fortunate than me.”

“After I left university in summer 2008, I applied to a number of UK-based charities for placements to get some experience in the sector. I joined Project HOPE in March 2009, and am working on a proposal to submit to various charities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who would be interested in funding field research in to violence and sexual crimes committed against orphans and other vulnerable children (OOVCs) in Gauteng Province, South Africa. As well as gathering evidence on the extent of the problem, the research project will also define ways to try and mitigate the impact of these crimes on the children, working with organisations already established in the region.”

“I’m spending two days a week at Project HOPE, and the rest of my time is divided between working for a charity fundraiser and in a designer clothes shop, as well as learning to drive! After this placement, I would like to work for a charity to get some further work experience in the sector, whilst saving to go to South America. My next step will be to go and work there with disadvantaged indigenous communities who lack access to opportunities for education, housing and employment, as well as travelling the sub-continent and becoming fluent in Spanish.”

“After 3-4 years of work and travel, I plan to return to the UK to study for a Masters in International Development or Demographic Statistics, which I will then use in my career helping to improve the lives of people less fortunate than me, while at the same time maintaining my interest in human nature, people and cultures of the world.”

For more details of internships with Project HOPE UK, click here.

Project HOPE assessing needs in South African settlements

From Stefan Lawson, Project Hope South Africa Country Director:
Over the past few weeks, with the help of two interns from East Tennessee State University, Project HOPE has been very busy conducting rapid needs assessments in a number of slums in and around the West Rand area.
We put together a survey to ask some specific questions about access to health facilities, water, sanitation, food, education and economic status and then went with someone from the local government into the slum area to begin conducting the survey. The first thing we did was to count the number of shacks – as these slums are “informal” there are no statistics on them, no one even knows exactly how many people live in them! So we walked up and down the rows of shacks counting them, which gave us an estimate of how many people are living there. With that number we worked out how many people we needed to survey to get an accurate sample of the population. After that, we went through the slum interviewing people at random to gather the information that we need. It has been very interesting because it provides the opportunity not only to collect data, but also to strike up conversations with people and let them tell you what the problems are and what they feel the solutions are.
There have been municipal strikes recently which has meant that a couple of these slums have not received any water. The government uses a tractor to pull a tank of water a couple of times a week into these areas. No water means limited cooking, washing and having to walk a distance to buy water from a shop when desperate. In all of these slums that I have visited, little food is grown, which means that people have to buy everything that they eat. With soaring food prices the amount and quality of food that people can buy is reduced. I like to dig a bit deeper with questions about food, asking where they get their food from and what they eat each day. A few people I interviewed were very honest. Their response was, “We don’t have money to buy food, so we steal it from the local farmer.” Walking around these areas you can see the intergenerational transmission of poverty very clearly. The mother who had a child at a young age is illiterate. Her child went to primary school but had to stop because she was “naughty”, which means she got pregnant. Her child faces so many barriers to overcome and break free from this cycle of disadvantage.
Project HOPE is currently designing a specific programme to address the needs of children under the age of 5 years, to enable them to break free from this cycle of poverty and help give them a brighter future where access to quality health care, education, basic services, employment opportunities and food will not be a dream, but a reality.

Project HOPE bids for funds for West Rand orphans

Project HOPE UK has submitted a proposal to the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to support important advances in the care of orphans and other vulnerable children in four informal settlements in West Rand, South Africa, as part of its “Munsieville Model” initiative.

The DFID bid, for funding under its Civil Society Challenge Fund, requests a grant of £495,000 to create satellite projects in the slum settlements, each of which aims to get the communities and the providers of essential services working together to benefit vulnerable children and their caregivers initially, and through them, the whole community.

Executive Director, Paul Brooks, described the core problem. “The four informal settlements are typical of many around the major cities of southern Africa; they house growing populations in extreme poverty, often outside the reach of government services and the activities of voluntary organisations. The problems of Africa are magnified in these slums and the thousands of children who have lost parents to AIDS face a massive struggle simply to survive.

“The residents of these settlements are reluctant to claim services from their government for fear that they could provoke action to clear their illegal sites, and government and charity workers are equally reluctant to provide services, fearing the high crime rates and massive demand for services in these communities. It is essential”, says Paul, “that we build a bridge so that these wonderfully resourceful communities can come into mainstream society, from the shadows of their squatter camps”.

Orphans and other vulnerable children are at the heart of the Project HOPE strategy for the West Rand settlements. Of all residents, they are the most needy, but also, the growing challenge they pose is perhaps the one major point of common interest between the residents, whose resources are being overwhelmed by them, and the government, which is under scrutiny from the international community to comply with the child rights treaties it has endorsed. Project HOPE UK believes that as the communities come together to improve the prospects of their children, it will have a dramatic impact on the way the entire population engages with government and civil society.

The focal point of the new project will be the establishment of five, fully sustainable early childhood development centres – pre-school facilities where caregivers can leave their children for five days each week, freeing them to participate in a wide-ranging training programme to equip them to give excellent care, and also gain employment, start small-scale businesses or tend high-yield vegetable gardens. Whilst at the pre-school centres, which will be operated by Project HOPE UK partners, Safe and Sound, the children will receive health screening and immunisation, development checks, nutritious meals and early childhood education.

Other services will cascade out to the wider community, including numerous Village Savings and Loans groups and regular awareness events, run jointly in the settlements, by Project HOPE South Africa, local authority service providers, charities and other agencies, to help residents benefit from full access to their rights, including healthcare, education, social services, legal registration and participation in democratic processes.

Along with the proposal submitted to DFID, Project HOPE UK is also applying for funds from a variety of other sources for similar projects in the West Rand area of South Africa, as part of its long term vision of establishing The Munsieville Model as one of Africa’s leading, fully-integrated and locally sustainable models of excellence in the care of orphans and other vulnerable children, focused on their health and total well-being, and through it, to influence and enhance work with such children everywhere.