Jonathan Kadiaka stands in for the needy

Retiring from his profession as a registered nurse in a provincial hospital in Rustenburg in 2001 and having nothing but a vision to help people and a tree for an office, Jonathan Kadiaka took a leap of faith and founded his non-profit organisation, Pholoshong Home Based Care (HBC).
To function the centre depends on volunteers working on the ground in villages to identify sick and needy people. Individuals are identified by the volunteers going around in the communities as well as educators who identify needy and vulnerable children.
Volunteers assist these persons to get to clinics, provide home based care by visiting them regularly to make sure they take their medicine and help them make follow-up appointments, he said.
“While we were working from under that tree, I had no idea that the organisation would grow this big. We currently cover the Lepelle-Nkumpi and Blouberg municipal areas and part of Polokwane,” he said as he remembered his starting days. Today, the centre has a total of 96 counsellors, 28 care givers, four professional nurses and four office staff.
Kadiaka was born in 1963 in Ga-Maleke where he attended and dropped out of school in his high school years because his parents could not meet the expense. His first job was as a pump attendant at a filling station. According to him the persons and companies he collaborated with during his time helped him finish his matric after which he went to Carletonville in 1982 where he started working and training as a nurse in a mine-based hospital.
After nine years he moved to Rustenburg where he worked as a nurse. In 1998 he moved back to Polokwane where, in 2001 he established Pholoshong and in 2003 registered it as a non-profit organisation with the Department of Social Development.
Kadiaka, coming from an impoverished family, was particularly fond of helping needy people while he worked in the hospital but, according to him, he knew there were people in the rural villages who were sick and could not reach the hospitals due to financial or transportation problems.
He then decided to start helping the people by either standing in for them at governmental offices and pharmacies in case they needed to collect something or to help transport them to where they needed to go.
Kadiaka said he started off in Ga-Mphahlele with 14 female volunteers and used a tree as his office until the tree was struck by lightning where after he and his volunteers could be accommodated in a building which a local chief made available to them.
He then started to seek funding from companies by doing various proposals but he finally got a breakthrough from the Department of Health when they started to fund his organisation, he said.
He then gave an example of one particular lady they helped: “One lady lived in a shack with nine family members of which one had tuberculosis. We helped them by raising funds to build a new home and to treat the infected child.”
According to Kadiaka, the organisation used to have a drop in centre but it was closed due to the lack of funding and volunteers and if the resources are available, he plans to reopen the facility.
Pholoshong HBC relies on the goodwill and donations of the community in order to operate. The organisation is also outsourced by the Department of Health by having HIV counselling and testing services (HTS) at local provincial hospitals he said.
He further said that the organisation is currently taking part in the Independent Development Trust’s Expanded Public Works Programme and is receiving some funding from the IDP, although more funds are required in order to reopen the Drop-in Centre.
Kadiaka explained that another service they offer is to assist people in visiting the Department of Home Affairs and Sassa offices. Kadiaka can be contacted on 083 486 7194 for any queries regarding the organisation and their offices can be located at 31 Hans van Rensburg Street.

Story and photos: THINUS DU TOIT
>>thinus@observer.co.za