Dedicated in developing women in Africa

Nolufefe, Annie Barber, Fisani and Samella Mdlangathi discussing plans to empower
poor women of Africa and vulnerable groups in Pietermaritzburg

SaveAct is an initiative started in rural areas to uplift poor communities by promoting Savings and Credit Groups as effective instruments for accessing financial services,building sustainable livelihoods and in vulnerable groups.

Samella Mdlangathi said,"SaveAct was established to respond to two significant problems: such as the prevalence of poverty, lack of secure rights and social exclusion - particularly of women , combined with wide spread of HIV/AIDS."

According to Nolufefe from Matatiela area said that SaveAct vision is to empower poor and vulnerable groups through social and economic mobilisation to become drivers of positive change ,individually and collectively.
Amongst other things encouraged to members is to operate their saving scheme with the limited resources they have and increase their confidence in saving money.

SaveAct is working in partnership with Family Literacy Project to develop an economic program for its family literacy groups. SaveAct is training groups in savings, credit and social insurance funds.
One of the members said, " When our member passed away we contribute towards burial of stokvel members of family.

Sukumawenze Place of Care

Sukumawenze Place of Care at Inanda Newtown off the main road 

The Sukumawenze Project was established in 1984, by Father P. McMahon OMI and Sister Mary-Ann Mkhize who were working in the parish. In 1980 a new community was established at Inanda Newtown, as it was a new settlement, with the people living in tents.The councillors Mr. Kubheka and Mr. Msimanga asked that they help the people as they had asked to be trained in various skills so as to help themselves. The Archdiocese of Durban erected the buildings and many were trained in knitting, sewing, upholstery and computer skills.
Since the year 2000 the Church is challenging its members to stand up and do something about poverty, unemployment and HIV/AIDS epidermic. Social Welfare also requested that we open a care centre. This centre was therefore transformed to help answer this needs.We have divided a hall into sleeping quarters to accommodate the terminally ill and their children, if there is no one left at home to care for them at home.
Working hand in hand with volunteers we offer the following services:

• We continue offering computer skills
• We are feeding children who are orphaned and sick.
• Sukumawenze Place of Care provides health care by visiting families, providing food where necessary.
• We offer free counselling and testing
• We have educational programmes with regards to HIV?AIDS and TB.

Non-governmental Organisation Project

Sukumawenze Place of Care at Inanda Newtown
                                                  Picture By : Emmanuel Pheta

Non-governmental Organisation Project

By: Emmanuel Pheta

Finding an NGO project that was going to assist set up multi-media tools to promote the work of the organisation was a hard nut to crack. The local project called Sukumawenze was the only NGO that have an access to the Internet as per assignment description.

Sukumawenze was established at Inanda Newtown in 1980, as it was a settlement, with people living in tents. This community was evacuated at Amaoti area when there was an out break of cholera, due to sanitation problems. The project is under the supervision of Sister Florence Xaba, who welcomed me with open hands.

The project has a website that was not updated and to get necessary tools to update their website was fruitless. Sister Xaba was not aware that, to get an access to their website I needed a password and a username which she did not posses. Their website was created on wordpress by Brother Steven who is now residing in the United Kingdom (UK) and could not be traced.

I managed to create a Twitter, Facebook page and their newsletter through the information gathered from the NGO and the volunteers. Fortunately, they have pictures from their archives and others I have to personally capture. The only pictures Xaba could not allow me to take were those of sick patients in the hospice. Florence thought it was unethical to take pictures of sick people and she strongly believed that was lowering their dignity and their self-esteem as they have rights as patients.

Photographs of the NGO`s work was not posted on the website as slide show on their site, due to difficulties, in obtaining permission but in the newsletter were included.

Website Link: http://coachingcaraven.co.za/place-of-care

                        : www.oblatesai.org/moremainnews.php?id=0000000007

Facebook       : Sukumawenze@facebook.com

Email              : Sukumawenze@gmail.com

Twitter           : sisterxaba@twitter.com

 

My experiences in finding an NGO

My focus was on Participatory Development Initiative (PDI) as a non-governmental organisation.  It was launched by a group of young community activists, trade unionists, researchers, media professionals and concerned citizens.

The organisation has a website, Twitter and Facebook page which is updated almost everyday. The NGO have encouraged the people around Inanda to develop projects that are sustainable. At present PDI has a feeding scheme under their pilot project called Masibambisane (which means let us work together), which is located around Inanda, near Phoenix area. Masibambisane project is currently organising women and youth in the area to address the lack of women empowerment and the youth.

By challenging the unsustainable anti-poor plans, policies and actions, PDI creates awareness among the poor communities of Inanda around Gandhi Settlement. PDI`s aim is to uplift the poor communities of Inanda implementing sewing project for women to support their families.PDI involves the poor local communities in the development of infrastructure important for socio-economic upliftment.

I have spoken to Ashish Ramgobin from PDI about getting permission to take photographs of their activities and she was going to come back to me the following day to give me the green light. Her response during our interview was that, she was going to consult with the board of directors and that did not happened.

I decided to use a local NGO known as Milk Africa Creche and pre-school which is sponsored by H.S. Suliman hardware from 124 Aberdare Drive, Phoenix Industrial Park.

I`ll give a brief background about the organisation, its vision and mission. What is required in this organisation is to open up a blog that will be written in a simple English language so that most people can understand the aims and the objectives of Milk Africa Creche and per-school. Blog entry is required, Twitter, Facebook and monthly newsletter for their achievements and the problems they are facing on a daily basis. Fundraising needs to be done through the engagement of Inanda Community Radio and a local newspaper, Link Tabloid.

Community activists and local businessmen need to be encouraged to give back to children what they can afford.



My package experience

I have learned that speed and accuracy is required during an interview.The interviewee don`t have to wait for you to take notes instead you need to have a set of questions to throw at your interviewee.Make sure that you push your respondent to the edge until he /she says something controversial or loose temper.Listening skill is vital when conducting an interview due to different pitching of peoples` voices. And it`s not easy to take video footage while you interview someone because you have to make sure that you don`t loose your focus on the view finder.At times you don`t have much time to follow you line of question and ad libbing is must have skill.
Background research before the interview need to be done in case that person had had more interviews. Find out if any person has conducted an interview with that person.Know your subject before you even consider organising an interview. Know if he/she is a difficult subject so that you can have all the material you might need for that person.
Timing plays an important role when preparing for an interview and the venue.The venue that I found to do my interview was a bit distracting because there were people working at the office as usual and the students were making a disturbing noise during their lunch break.

KwaZuluNatal Society for the Blind

The NGO of my choice is society for the blind in KwaZulu-Natal. I have studied their website carefully and only to find out that their site has no newsletter and articles being published on their site.

The site deals with skills training, children`s service, residential and fundraising. What is amazing is that if you click on this services nothing is shown except blank pages.

What I would prefer to see on their site is their vision, mission and their strategic approach to the crisis.  There are no audio files and pictures and it seems as if no one is updating their website.

The second NGO was the Treatment Action Campaign which seemed much organised than society for the blind.TAC has newsletters and press releases which are on a monthly basis.It has district blogs where people can blog about their experiences.

You can even find audio,  visuals files and pictures on their site which is a sign of activism.

Treatment Action Campaign(TAC)

At first, I was not aware of the importance of the non-governmental organisation until I studied New Media.My first article was about the TAC and their mission as an organisation.

I interviewed Mr. EM Sibiya who is an HIV/AIDS counsellor in Pinetown. He explains about teenage pregnancy which is rife in our communities.The Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) advised people to undergo blood test for HIV infection. Mr. Sibiya said, " We do pre-counselling before taking blood sample and post- counselling after handing over results.

Mother-to-child prevention has been a major issue between the government and the TAC.The Treatment action campaign has to take the government to court before accepting that HIV causes AIDS.The Antiretroviral therapy has been going on a snail pace until the TAC stamp its foot down and said enough is enough.Women has to breast feed their babies for six months to ensure that they live a health lives.

I did not know that a persons` CD4 count has to be less than 200 hundred for the person to access ARVs.

KwaZulu-Natal is the highest Province with more people infected with HIV epidermic the statistics reveals that eight of ten people are infected.