Building the nation through education | Part 2
As a public health specialist who worked with the Department of Health for Many years, Victoris Mubaiwa was exposed to the hard living conditions children face in informal settlements.
Having worked extensively in the public health sector, Glenmore resident, Dr. Victoria Mubaiwa founded non-profit organisation House of Dorcas in 2019. Berea Mail sat down to chat with Mubaiwa to find out more. In Part 1, we found out how Mubaiwa and her team are educating children from Mayvile and Cato-Crest. This week we find out about the health issues that inspired Mubaiwa to start her NPO.
MUBAIWA founded House of Dorcas in 2019, when she noticed children begging along Sandile Thusi (Argyle) Road.
“They would arrive on a Friday with their mothers and sleep there on the street until Sunday when they would go back home. I traced them back to their home in Inanda. I wanted to find out why they would choose to leave their home and sleep on the street,” said Mubaiwa.
What she discovered led Mubaiwa to start her NPO.
“There was just no food at their home and they were honestly hungry. Whatever they received over the weekend – they would use that for the week. I felt it was really an unhealthy environment for children and started working with the mothers to help them develop skills to start their own businesses,” explained Mubaiwa.
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Her work was disrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic when she lost touch with the families she had assisted and began working with Sakhisizwe Community Learning Hub. Mubaiwa noted that she has since seen another family begging along the road.
How it all began
As a public health specialist, Mubaiwa worked for the Department of Health for years, focusing on public health policy, health programmes, health system management and governance.
“When I was working as a public health officer, I realised that when we treated a child for diarrhoea, they would come back with the same problem because we were sending them back into the same environment that was making them sick. I wanted to be able to focus beyond the individual, to look at the family and the community. I wanted to know what needed to change so the children would not come back sick again,” she said.
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This work exposed Mubaiwa to the hard living conditions children face in informal settlements.
“I have been in their homes; I have walked where they walk; at times, I had to drink the water they drank. I saw how people live and how their environment affects their health,” she said, adding that seeing these harsh realities helped her understand why children would choose to sleep on the Durban streets instead.
The NPO is in need of donations to procure and convert containers into classrooms. They are also looking for volunteers to tutor children in maths and coding. For more information, contact Mubaiwa on 083 658 7065.
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