The Sun introduces the man behind the hub for youth empowerment and social upliftment in Wentworth, Tom Butterworth, who took a moment to share a bit about his life and the amazing work he does at the Blue Roof Life Space.
Tom has been happily married for 22 years with three beautiful children. Originally from Johannesburg, Tom studied in Pretoria as well as Cape Town and spent 12 years in London and eventually found a place he is happy to call home in Durban for the past seven years. “I applied for the centre manager position at Blue Roof in 2016 at the peak of its transformation and it has truly been a fulfilling experience,” said Tom.
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The Blue Roof in Wentworth was originally a notorious nightclub. The space was reinvented for good, however, when Alicia Keys together with Keep a Child Alive (KCA) turned it into a wellness centre for comprehensive HIV treatment in 2005. Then it was under this mandate that the space provided HIV services and support to thousands of people for 11 years.
“In 2016, KCA gave Zoëlife, which is an organisation focused on bringing wholeness to children, youth and families, the opportunity to take Blue Roof through a second transformation so that it would be able to better meet the needs of the community over a decade later. With broader societal issues around children and youth becoming increasingly evident, Zoëlife widened the focus of the centre from HIV interventions and more to community wellness more broadly and re-launched it as the Blue Roof Life Space, ” he shared.
The physical building is now a hub from which a range of services and interventions can be run. In line with the broader Zoëlife focus on wellness in all its forms, Blue Roof is a place to offer friendship and support, health and educational solutions and creative opportunities to help individuals break out of damaging cycles.
“I came on board to implement this new vision and manage the change for Blue Roof to become a youth centred space. The idea was that we were no longer an HIV clinic but rather promoting a holistic life space. The idea is to draw young people to engage with one another and participate in positive activities. When you walk in here you get to experience a whole lot of different programmes and activities that are aligned with our mission’s main pillars, namely, heal, dream and create. Our youth need to be healthy under the heal banner, they need to dream and be given opportunities that will help them discover their skills and passions, they need to create where they are taught to get in touch with their creative side and how they can use that to positively impact their lives.”
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The Blue Roof Life Space offers programmes that entail dance, music, creative arts, after school tuition, sport activities for the disabled, career guidance, support for pregnant teenagers, business clinics as well as the youth clinic facility. The centre is currently in discussions with the department of health to roll out a fully fledged youth centre clinic that will cater for all the needs of young people from family planning through to mental health and even treating illnesses like eczema.
The centre has made great strides in getting the youth involved in its many programmes, such as having 3000 youth visit the career guidance centre as well as tested over 700 youth for HIV, last year alone. The Blue Roof Life Space works closely with a number of other non-profit, non-governmental and strategic organisations in and around ward 68 in their mission to positive social change in the local youth. The centre is however always in need of volunteers, community support as well as funding, as man-power and resources are the organisation’s main challenges.
“Our work is very resource intensive and their is a lot of logistic work in the background when carrying out a large programme,” said Tom in an appeal to local business for funding and sponsorship towards the various programmes.
“We would love to start a food programme or feeding scheme, as we have found that a lot of people who come into the centre are hungry. If there is anybody that would be able to either fund or run such an initiative, that would be wonderful. We have a kitchen that has recently been refurbished thanks to funding from Afri Sun and we’re ready to go, all we need is help in providing a nutritious meal. Furthermore, we would also love to offer a course or programme for catering to empower the youth,” he said.
For more information on how to fund or get involved in the Blue Roof Life Space call 031-267-0080.
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