Ikageng Itireleng Aids Ministry

Ikageng was founded in 2001, the organisation is situated in Orlando West Soweto. The issues that led to the organisation’s establishment were quite many. About the 11 years ago, our country and the world in general, were confronted with the challenge of HIV/AIDS pandemic. This in turn had more chronic ripple effects on the lives of many people, particularly children and young adults. The results were the growing orphans in the country and in our community where we live, this challenge was overwhelmingly great. Many children suffered as a result of HIV/AIDS disease. The community has more children involved in drugs, sex for cash, alcohol abuse and joblessness. But the root cause to all these challenges is the issue of rampant poverty, which continues to be a challenge even in the present. More and more young people have turned to be parents at a young age and this has robbed them of the opportunity to grow and realise their futures and dreams and this in turn creates a society that doesn’t have direction and hope. Many of the households are youth headed and some don’t even have means of subsistence living.

Poverty is a very complex issue that has many causes. At the individual level, if someone does not have the skills or health or the opportunity to secure a decent paying job that can guarantee their basic needs, he/she will likely fall into poverty—or never get out of it to begin with. A sad reality of poverty is that it can easily be transmitted from one generation to the next. Poverty in childhood is a root cause of poverty in adulthood: Impoverished children often grow up to be impoverished parents who in turn bring up their own children in poverty. Thus, poverty can breed poverty, forming a vicious cycle. You can imagine then the consequences for a country and its people. If the population is undernourished, unhealthy, and has no education, it will be very hard for that economy to grow.

Project Background:

IKAGENG is focused on assisting AIDS affected child-headed households’ (CHHs) in Soweto, Gauteng. There are currently over 1000 in 300 in IKAGENG’s care. The organisation also provides for their psycho-social needs.

IKAGENG tries to ensure that at least 80% of the children complete secondary education and either attend tertiary education or find employment. Children are not taken out of their homes or separated from their siblings following the death of their parents. Instead the family unit is maintained by keeping the children in their own homes, helping them to contact relatives or family friends who may be able to assist them.

Project Description:

Community Support Program:
•IKAGENG provides for the basic needs of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC).These needs include monthly food parcel delivery, clothing, water, electricity, school fees, uniforms and supplies transport.
•Visits each home a minimum of three times a week.
•Delivers food parcels on a monthly basis.
•Applies for bursaries for children for tertiary education, or assisting with job applications for children moving into the workplace.
•Facilitates events and activities to help the children in their holistic development.
•Assists with the acquisition of ID documents.
•Provide after school care

Education Programme:
•The education programme ensures that all children are placed in institutions of learning and development from ECD to tertiary.
•Emphasis is placed on excellence in areas of studies and academic performance.
•To ensure quality education, children are taken for quarterly workshops to harness their skills and their attitude towards life (life skills programs).


A: PSYCHOSOCIAL AND HEALTH SUPPORT PROGRAMME
Considering the traumatic experience orphaned and vulnerable children are exposed to for years and from and at childhood stages, the overall aim of the programme is ensure that children’s emotional, psychological, social and health well-being is improved as much as possible. The programme is lead by qualified social worker, caregivers, and community volunteers. The areas of need currently are extra financial resources to do more home and hospital visits, camps for the children, and extra resources for the Housemother programme. The details of the areas of need are as follows:

HOUSE MOTHERS PRGRAMME

House mothers are foster parents who look after children who need to be adopted, but have not gone through the government’s adoption system yet. Ikageng has ten (10) house mothers, taking care of eighteen (18) children in different locations in Soweto.

Stipend
To take care of the children, each house mother receives a foster care grant for each child. This is based on the government’s foster care grant system. They are currently receiving R650-00 per child, although the government foster care grant is R750-00.

Capacity building
Ikageng’s house mothers need parenting skills capacity building, due to the fact that the children they are taking care of have been through traumatic events such as loss, grief and bereavement. They also need it due to a generational gap. A psychologist from Sci-Bono has volunteered to conduct four (4) parenting skills workshops for them for free for 2011.What is needed now is transport costs.

LIFESKILLS CAMPS

Camps are a medium through which young people’s lives are transformed, making use of life skills programmes. Camps can also be used to address psychological issues such as disappointment, which is what happened to some of the beneficiaries when they did not receive the services promised to them. Two camps have been planned in the next six (6) months, which are targeted at the beneficiaries that did not receive any services.
HEALTH CARE AND SUPPORT

This programme gives care and support to children and adults to children on ART, who are taken to clinic and hospital visits o a monthly basis. Then home visits are conducted t ensure that adherence to treatment takes place. Basic home care is also conducted when the need arises.
HOME VISITS

Home visits are conducted to ensure the well being of the beneficiaries at home. They are firstly conducted by social auxiliary workers to determine the eligibility of service to the family. Secondly, they are conducted by health workers if a family member is or needs to be on ART. Thirdly, they are conducted by EPWP’s who are the organizations’ foot soldiers, who check on the family’s well being and report to the OVC’s coordinators, who in return conduct spot checks on the families. Fourthly, they are conducted by social auxiliary workers or the social worker to families that need intervention.

B: NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT PROGRAMME

This is one of the key interventions to the constant challenge of child headed households, and other orphaned and vulnerable children in South Africa – Food Security. Ikageng therefore has determined to provide nutritious food parcels on a monthly basis to the households where these children live. Linked to this programme is the vegetable garden that has been set up for adults of some of these to produce part of the food they need, themselves. The great area of need in this programme is more monthly food parcels, and sustaining the vegetable garden that has just been set up. The details of the areas of need are as follows:

MONTHLY FOOD PARCELS

Ikageng has resolved to provide 100% of the Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamins and minerals to over 80% of the beneficiaries in need of nutritional support, especially for those children on Anti Retroviral Treatment. The food parcels that we distribute per month consists of basic food items (staple food items), for families in Soweto, and they also include toiletries, especially for child or youth headed households, where there is completely no income. Besides monthly food parcels, the organization also provides lunch packs for children on ART attending school, and other children who cant afford food at school. About 72 children are currently receiving lunch packs daily to school.

FOOD GARDEN PROJECT
This project was initiated as set up in October 2011, and has a dedicated project manager trained and supported by a food garden organization called Food and Trees for Africa. The garden is set on 8 acres of land but only 15% of the land has been planted. The project allows guardians and caregivers of children to be involved in some food production initiatives themselves, in order to sustain themselves and others. The project is in dire need for stipend of the manager and other members to continue.


C: EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT PROGRAMME

The cornerstone to success of Ikageng’s cause is the empowerment of these children and education is such a key tool to doing that. The aim of the organization is to ensure that children access education and they perform well, to become productive and responsible citizens and leaders of their future. Through this programme, Ikageng supports children from early childhood development, to basic/foundation schooling up to tertiary schooling. The organization also links children to access financial resources themselves to help them with their costs of education and don’t have to depend on the financial resources of the organization, especially those young adults who the majority are caregivers of their siblings. The biggest area of need in this prorgramme is resources for those children at secondary school and tertiary, whose fees remains unpaid by January 2013. The implications are that they may loose out on the work of the entire year of study, be being expelled or not being allowed to write their end of the year examinations. There is also a huge need to start and roll out , urgently, an extra lesson programme for those in secondary school, and with no funds available, that it not possible. The details of specific areas of needs are as follows:

Primary and ECD Programme:

Primary program has been a very important body in the whole structure of the organization. The funds available only covered only 41% of children based on their different needs. This then leaves a huge gap of about 59% going unfunded. This is the gap we trying to bridge in the current financial year going to 2013. We have projected that by end of 2014, we going to have 50 more children under this program. The ECD programme has more 80 children all over Soweto from the very families we supporting. These children are placed in various crèches around Soweto and have access to early childhood quality teachings. Under it, we have revamped our toy library to cater for their recreational needs and creativeness.

Secondary program:

The secondary program was the main focus in March up the current; one big initiative was to strengthen this program by introducing Saturday School programme to provide curricular support to children attending schools. This was done as part of the new developments and a long term goal to ensure that children get necessary and quality education. In order to be able to maintain sustainability, the new team of education department encouraged learners to come on regular basis to be assisted, also as an indirect way of encouraging learner/beneficiary participation. This programme has done well so far and it is continuing to impact more children through its newly refined structures and policy. The Saturday school is growing exponentially and it has attracted more children from outside, we are now on the brink of clinching a donor for the entire program. This program is goal orientated in the sense that we want to reach a particular target for our children come end of the year, improving the marks of the children in general.

We also have an annual career day for all children from Grade 10 to grade 12. The purpose of this initiative is to bring learners closer to the institutions, companies and different career paths they want to pursue in the future. This has proven positive results as more children have benefited from it. More children have shown better understanding of what they want to do career wise and what other opportunities exist out there. The average career day would costs us R40 000.

Tertiary:

The tertiary program consists of 56 children placed in different universities and colleges. This was another challenging program to run, to get it off the ground. The foundation for this program was there but it was not adequately and successfully executed, so this meant that we had to start from scratch in driving this program. Nevertheless, the program has gotten off the ground and is running very well. We have placed students in all major institutions such University of Johannesburg, University of Witwatersrand and University of South Africa. This placement is done under meticulous and thorough assessment process conducted by the education department team. Our students are making a steady progress, they are doing well at their respective institutions given the time we had and the shortage of resources we experienced during every process we tried.