Home From Home
Capetown, South Africa
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28,500 children are abandoned each year in South Africa, largely due to the staggeringly high prevalence of HIV/AIDS . Many are HIV+ themselves and end up in institutions without the care they deserve. Your gift supports Home From Home, building six-children houses with a permanent housemother, counseling and education.
For your support, you will receive an embossed donation certificate along with vital details about the
cause. It’s a gift of giving, and a special opportunity to spread love and hope to those who need it most.
Overview
Based on a model that has been tested in practice as a viable alternative to institutionalized child-care, Home from Home
developed a program for foster care, and was registered as a charity in
May 2005. Believing that children thrive and grow in as close to a
family environment as possible, and preferably within their own
communities, Home from Home aims to provide supported and supervised
foster care for orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children in small
family homes in their own communities.
Program initiatives include:
- Have no more than six children in each home, all cared for by a House Mother with a part-time assistant
- Provide fill supervision and back-up for each House Mother and encourage support from the local community
- Monitor each home to ensure that the children are well cared for and that all their needs are being addressed
- Ensure that siblings remain together wherever possible and that children continue in full-time education
- Offer support to each House Mother by means of initial and ongoing training support groups and counseling
- Ensure that each group of children and their House Mother is supported by a small group of committed volunteers
- Actively
seek long-term care for children by identifying family members, or
possible adoptive parents, and where possible integrate children back
into their own families
Need
South Africa faces a very real crisis of children
being orphaned or abandoned due to HIV/AIDS. Currently 28 500 children
are abandoned every year. Many of these children end up in institutions.
The majority of the children adopted into the Home
from Home program are HIV+, and therefore require homes that will be
attentive to their emotional needs and medical needs. Believing that
these children will flourish best in a home-like environment, Home from
Home from home has stepped out of the typical model and aimed at
several home situations with a parent figure and family setting.
The Project
In 2006, Wellspring funded land purchase and
construction of our first house with Home from Home in Ilitha Park,
Khayelitsha. The project was completed in April 2007, and one house
mother and six children now make it their home. Our support of this
project is two-fold: property costs and annual costs. The property
costs include land purchase, house construction, and furnishings, and
the annual costs include clothing, transportation, school fees,
maintenance, house mother salaries and other basic expenses. While the
property costs have been funded, Wellspring has committed to provide
the annual running costs for a minimum of three years.
Wellspring has provided the funds to build two homes and now maintains the running costs of both.
View Photos from this project.