Isibindi cares for children

Isibindi KwaGuqa started with their project in 2006 and they have never looked back.

The Isibindi project trains persons in child and youth care work and they are then deployed in their own communities under the supervision of a qualified social worker, to work with children at risk as a result of poverty and HIV/AIDS where children are orphaned, live in child-headed households or granny headed households, or care for their ailing parents.

The group of dedicated volunteers has helped a lot of children in the past. They have youth programmes, 29 young people have been enrolled in FET colleges, three are doing engineering courses at different institutions and four children have been enrolled at university level, one of whom is doing medicine at Medunsa.

Isibindi is in the process of helping other young people to open up their own businesses.
Their centre, which they call Safe Parks, also has food gardens to encourage children to do food gardens at their homes to help sustain them, and not to rely on Isibindi always.

The volunteers not only do home visits but they also do pre-school and school visits.
They have been trained to become child and youth care workers and the National Association of Child Care Workers (NACCW) offers the training. The training is focused on child and youth rights, development, support and care. They were taught to provide care for all child development aspects, such as physical, emotional, social, cognitive or spiritual. They also are able to demonstrate and teach parents specific routines about nutrition, hygiene, safety or games to engage with their child.

They do training on HIV/AIDS care and support. The children are assessed during play and different activities are held at the park.
“We have developed relationships with all the schools, clinics and other departments. The children are referred to us and our trained staff assesses those that we pick up from homes. Some of the children are from abusive relationships and we refer them to relevant departments. We also have an after care programme where the children are helped with their homework,” said Ms Pinky Mathibela, Project Manager of Isibindi.

The centre has nine child care workers, Ms Dinah Masango is the project coordinator and the two supervisors are Ms Joyce Shoba and Ms Mapule Motau.

Recently the group helped a disabled child with the donation of a full soccer kit attire from Germany.