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The Woza Moya Project

Woza Moya's mission is to provide quality community care and support for people infected and affected by HIV/Aids. By providing home-based care, orphan intervention and food security, Woza Moya aims to alleviate hunger, poverty and suffering through a holistic approach. Socio-economic conditions, a person's psychological and spiritual health, as well as his/her physical welfare, all need to be considered and taken care of.

The Woza Moya Project is located in the Ufafa area - Ward 3 - of the Ubuhlebezwe municipality, in the Sisonke district. The project offices are housed at the Buddhist Retreat Centre, where the Project Manager also resides.

The most recent population figure available for Ward 3 is 23 000. The level of unemployment stands at 70%, with 15% of the population receiving pensions and a further 15% being employed in Gauteng, Durban or locally by Sappi. Some of those employed are on an ‘ itogo' (piecemeal) basis.

The Ufafa community is situated in rural KwaZulu-Natal, about 15km from Ixopo. The terrain is very hilly. There is no electricity, telecommunications or sanitation. There is one main dirt road that winds its way for about 30km, through the Ufafa region. There are no other formal roads. Road access to some areas is dependent on dry weather. The main sources of water are the river and boreholes. Most people live in traditional-style homes made of mud and thatch, which often have problems, such as walls collapsing during the rainy season. People walk long distances to collect firewood and fetch water. These factors are important to bear in mind when considering Woza Moya's work in this community. The infrastructures, which are taken for granted in urban areas, do not exist here. A relatively simple undertaking can become quite challenging in this environment.

There are five primary schools and two high schools in Ward 3. There is one crèche; a second one is presently being built in the Mashakeni community. Nonkwenkwane Hall is the community centre which hosts the Flagship sewing project, run by the Department of Health (DOH).

The mobile clinic from Ixopo visits five communities in Ward 3, every fortnight. Otherwise patients have to go to Ixopo for assistance. Traditional healers are widely consulted.

The HIV/Aids infection rate, according to the Ixopo Department of Health's antenatal survey, conducted from April 2003 to August 2003, shows that 47% of pregnant women presenting themselves at the antenatal clinic are HIV-positive. Of the general patients referred for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT), 78% tested positive, during this five-month period. The results of this survey have been confirmed by Woza Moya's experience in 2003, as the HIV/Aids pandemic has claimed an increasing number of lives, resulting in a growing orphan population and more vulnerable, impoverished people.

In response to this situation, Woza Moya has continued to focus on HIV/Aids awareness and prevention, home-based care, orphan intervention and food security. In October 2003, Woza Moya secured a contract with the National Development Agency (NDA), the main South African government development distribution body, which allowed us to employ three field staff to extend and develop our existing programme. This grant has really empowered Woza Moya to improve and strengthen the work we are trying to do in this community.

Woza Moya operates with the full involvement and blessing of the chief and traditional leaders of Ufafa. We are pleased to be able to report that these good relations have been maintained in 2003, despite some difficult internal politics and upheavals in the community.

STATISTICS 01 APRIL 2003 – 31 MARCH 2004

WOZA MOYA'S WORK

•  Home-Based Care

The volunteers do regular home visits to their assigned families – about 22 families each – where they identify and support the primary caregivers in the homes. They also disseminate important information and give advice on a wide range of topics, such as health issues, nutrition, hygiene, clean water, sanitation, social pensions and grants. The details of each home visit are recorded and medical supplies given out are filled in on report sheets.

Woza Moya has basic medical supplies, mostly for pain relief, building the immune system and to treat some of the opportunistic infections, such as shingles, diarrhoea, thrush and skin eruptions. Malnutrition and related conditions such as scabies are also common and medicines are available for these too. The volunteers' home-based care kits are also equipped with first-aid materials. Woza Moya provides nutritional supplements – epap and Impilo – for a minimal price.

Shoes and uniforms are provided for all the volunteers. They also receive a monthly stipend for out-of-pocket expenses incurred while doing home visits.

The volunteers meet with the management team once a month in small groups to discuss their work and also to check on how they are doing. All their written reports for the month are read and statistics gathered. Jane Nxasana, the Home-Based Care Co-ordinator, does regular random spot-check visits to all the volunteers' homes. The feedback from these visits has been overwhelmingly positive. The work of the Woza Moya team is well received and greatly appreciated by the community.

Generally the Woza Moya management team has its hands full after these monthly meetings. There is always much that needs to be followed up; with the various government departments, traditional leaders, schools, clinic, hospital or individual families in the community requesting special visits, for various reasons.

•  Paralegal Programme

Obtaining social pensions and grants is the most sustainable and challenging part of our poverty alleviation programme. TC Ngcobo, the Paralegal Co-ordinator, liases with the various government departments such as Home Affairs and Social Welfare.

Most poor people in this community do not have any documentation. Woza Moya encourages and oversees volunteers in assisting people to obtain letters from the traditional leaders, school principals, the clinic or in obtaining affidavits or baptism certificates. This is mostly to prove that people exist, so that they can claim from the welfare department. Applicants are assisted to Home Affairs to apply for the relevant documentation. Once all the documentation is in place, people are directed to the Social Welfare offices in Ixopo.

Woza Moya has a list of well over 100 orphans waiting for foster child grants; some have been waiting for almost two years now. The other grants, such as disability, care dependency, and child support, are almost as difficult to obtain. This is mostly due to the radical shortage of staff in the Ixopo Social Welfare offices. There is only one social worker for the entire Ubuhlebezwe region. The other three posts for social workers have been empty for more than six months now. Woza Moya has put pressure on the Department of Social Development – locally, regionally and nationally – to address this situation, to little avail. Woza Moya's role is primarily that of a watchdog, keeping detailed records of all applications and monitoring any progress made.

Another important area of work for Woza Moya is the schools. Some school principals are refusing to allow orphaned vulnerable children access to school. Woza Moya informs the community of the School Fee Exemption Policy for poor children and challenges school principals who are refusing children this right (also see School Sponsorship Programme, later). Woza Moya has received a number of reports of children being beaten and mistreated by a particular school principal and has attempted mediation on behalf of parents who are afraid of and intimidated by this principal.

The death rate has been consistently high. Woza Moya gives assistance and advice regarding funeral policies, how to access death benefits and interpret wills, where they exist. Wills are unfortunately still seldom seen or heard of in this community. This is becoming increasingly problematic, as the Tribal Authority in the community does not allow unmarried or single women to own property. This is in contradiction with the constitution of South Africa and poses a serious threat to child-headed households. In many situations the men disappear once the children have been born; they or other male relatives resurface often only years later, after the mother has passed away, to claim the home as their own, often chasing the children away from their own homes. The subject of wills was one of the topics discussed at the NDA Paralegal campaign and Woza Moya plans to hold a more comprehensive training workshop on wills later in the year.

The Woza Moya NDA Paralegal campaign held on the 11 March 2003 was a huge success with literally thousands of people in the Ufafa community attending. This was a very effective way of disseminating important information to people about their legal rights. Included in the speakers were representatives from Home Affairs, Social Welfare, Black Sash, Children's Rights Centre, Ixopo police, Pietermaritzburg Legal Aid clinic and others.

TC Ngcobo sits on various committees representing Woza Moya and the Ufafa community. The Social Welfare regional offices in Pietermaritzburg have invited Woza Moya onto their committee. TC also represents Woza Moya on the BIG (Basic Income Grant) coalition committee in Durban. This is an initiative of the Black Sash to address poverty in South Africa.

•  Food Security / Poverty Alleviation

As mentioned above, one important way of alleviating poverty is by assisting people in the community to obtain social pensions and grants that are due to them. This is an ongoing part of Woza Moya's work.

Benedicta Ndlovu, the Income Generation Co-ordinator is involved in a number of food security and poverty alleviation initiatives.

Benedicta underwent training at the Heifer offices near Durban in order to oversee the Heifer project. Heifer was introduced to Woza Moya and this community by Moyra Keane and Cliff Malcome. 25 farmers have been provided with 18 egg-laying chickens each. Heifer will only operate under the auspices of an established CBO in communities. For this reason Woza Moya has been involved from the beginning. Benedicta sits on the Heifer committee, oversees the financial records for Heifer, does spot-check visits to the families with chickens and assists the farmers in obtaining a market for their eggs.

Woza Moya also facilitates training in the development of community vegetable gardens. Woza Moya will also be initiating food gardens for individual affected families in the near future. Benedicta is presently involved in setting up another community vegetable garden with Ufafa Agricultural officer, S'pelele Ngubane. A site in the Siweni area has been set aside and a new committee of vegetable farmers chosen. The delay here has been due to the Agriculture Department's tardiness in providing fencing. The farmers cannot proceed until the fence is up because of the threat posed to the potential crops by goats.

Woza Moya is in the planning phase of setting up a Food Security Programme to deal with families who are starving. The NDA contract allocated monies for agricultural and income generation tools. The idea is to provide a family in crisis with food parcels for three months. They will also be provided with seedlings and farming tools on loan. To this end, Woza Moya has purchased seven sets of gardening tools, such as spades, rakes, picks, hoes, pangas, cane knives, buckets, watering cans and so on. Benedicta, who has received training in setting up home food gardens, will visit these families regularly to offer advice and assistance. Mr Edward Fakidolo from Heifer has been a great help in advising us on how to set up this programme.

The poorest families identified by Woza Moya receive second-hand clothing that is donated to us. Woza Moya has set in place a strict selection procedure for choosing families in need. We have learned that in a culture of poverty, programmes such as this – involving material benefits – can quickly create tensions, jealousies and conflict between neighbours. Clear boundaries and procedures have been established to avoid this.

Woza Moya purchased a sewing machine with the monies set aside by NDA for income generation tools. We plan initially, to take on another volunteer specifically to sew children's clothing and school uniforms. We hope at a later stage to develop this programme into a means of providing income for the project.

•  School Sponsorship Programme

Many vulnerable children are unable to attend school because they cannot afford the uniform and shoes and are unable to pay the school fees. We reached a dead-end in our negotiations with the Education Department who will not take responsibility for this crisis.

Woza Moya decided to initiate a School Sponsorship Programme whereby children are provided with a uniform, shoes, a tracksuit and other school accessories. We ask donors for a once-off payment of R500 per child for the year. This means that sponsorship is not automatically renewable and people in the community understand that sponsorship is entirely dependent on what people offer from year to year. We have decided to limit this programme to children in primary schools from Grade 1 to Grade 5. In the past year, Woza Moya has sponsored 55 children; 20 at Lusiba Primary School, 10 at Sinevuso and 25 at Mpofini Primary school.

Benedicta Ndlovu oversees this programme. Donors are provided with a photograph of the child they are sponsoring for the year and an introductory paragraph written by Benedicta. Donors are invited to the annual Woza Moya Christmas party where they can meet ‘their' child, in person. Other visits during the year are discouraged as it is time-consuming to arrange visits into the community and interferes with Woza Moya's other work. Donors are welcome to send gifts via the volunteers to the child they are sponsoring.

•  HIV/Aids Education and Counselling

Jabu Molefe and Hunson Duma from Siyaphila Support Group, visit Woza Moya every month to offer on going HIV/Aids information and counselling, anti-retroviral treatment literacy and to do home visits. The volunteers report on patients who are open to Jabu and Hunson visiting them at home. This is to encourage people who are displaying signs and symptoms of being HIV-positive, to talk about their illness, to know their status and to join a support group. The volunteers are presently receiving ongoing training from Jabu and Hunson on support groups. This is our next major goal, to set up support groups around the Ufafa region, under the guidance of Jabu Molefe. We plan to establish support groups that will also be involved in producing beadwork.

Jabu and Hunson will be meeting with the Ixopo hospital and clinic to set up a referral system, in the near future. This means that when patients have received Voluntary Counselling & Testing ( VCT ) at the hospital or clinic and tested positive, there will a support network available for them, if they wish, when they return home to their communities.

Support groups are one of the prerequisites laid down by the South African government, in order for HIV-positive people to access anti-retrovirals, when they become available. Support groups are therefore, of vital importance.

•  Challenges

During this past year under review our challenges have been many, covering a wide range of issues, from poverty, gender discrimination, sexual abuse, HIV/Aids stigma and denial in this community, to government departments not delivering services, to our own increasingly demanding administration and financial requirements.

Poverty and food security has been one of our greatest challenges. Many families are without food and no means of income. More often than not these families are nursing sick people and housing orphaned children too. Food is the most immediate and urgent need in these homes. Often these people who are poor, hungry and sick are also depressed, having given up all hope. We plan to have the food security programme up and running by September 2004. We will begin with ten families initially and then expand the programme as finances allow.

Even though HIV/Aids is still not openly spoken about in this community, we have seen some definite progress in one-on-one counselling situations. Our volunteers have reported more patients discussing, in private with them, their concerns about their HIV status. Every month our volunteers are reporting more people who are willing to talk and receive visits from our HIV/Aids counsellors. We are hopeful that in this forthcoming year we will be able to facilitate the beginning of a few HIV/Aids support groups in this community.

Gender discrimination and its impact on the spread of HIV/Aids is a major concern. Men have many sexual partners. Their often violent, abusive and selfish behaviour goes largely unchallenged in this community. Domestic violence and child abuse are common challenges encountered in our work. This connection between violence, power and sex is the main contributing factor around the spread of HIV/Aids in this community.

Children orphaned as a result of HIV/Aids become particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. We have seen a pattern of sexual abuse by male relatives. These orphaned children can also become sought after commodities, as they become eligible for the Foster Child grant. They are often caught between adults fighting over them because of their worth. We have had a number of situations where male relatives have stolen a child and claimed him/her as their own, so that they can get the grant each month. The child's welfare is of no interest to them.

In order for one to obtain a Foster Child grant the social worker from Ixopo needs to do a home visit. We have not seen her in our community for many months now. We have over 100 orphans waiting for these visits; some have been waiting for almost 2 years. We have continued to raise our voice locally and also regionally but to little avail. Ixopo has only one social worker, even though there are four posts. The remaining three posts have been vacant for more than six months. Whenever we contact the regional director, he informs us of yet another due date of arrival of new social workers, which passes without any change. We will only be dealing with this issue on a national level in future; addressing our challenges to the Minister of Social Development, Mr Zola Skweyiya.

It is vital to remember that we are situated at the centre of the HIV/Aids epidemic in the world. KwaZulu-Natal is the worst affected region in South Africa. This particular region – Ufafa – was also badly affected by political violence from the late 1980s through to the 1990s. This resulted in considerable loss of life, displacement of people as they fled certain areas to avoid attack, the disintegration of families, orphans, the death of breadwinners and increased levels of poverty.

This situation has made this community particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and the impact of the disease. At a time when people had to face a daily struggle to survive, they were not particularly concerned about a disease that might kill them in ten years' time. Their immediate needs, such as food and shelter, were far more relevant. For these reasons early attempts at HIV/Aids education were not very successful in this community.

Our home visits to various households in the Ufafa region have revealed many families that are struggling to cope with the impact of the disease. Poor communities, such as this, are hardest hit by the epidemic. People do not have the skills and resources to deal with the consequences in a co-ordinated and sustainable manner.

The Woza Moya team has focused on strengthening support services in the community to enable people to care for the sick and dying and also to support those left behind in an effective and sustainable way.

The volunteer team receives ongoing training in home-based care, bereavement counselling, community fostering and care of orphans, and social pensions and grants. They, in turn, provide skills training and information to affected households as a means of poverty alleviation.

The Woza Moya team presently services about 500 families, in 6 communities, in the Ufafa region. Plans to extend this programme are entirely dependent on funding available. While the number of new infections is still increasing with no sign of reaching a natural limit, the epidemic is now at a stage where large numbers of people are becoming sick and dying of HIV/Aids-related illnesses. With this in mind, our hope and vision is to expand this care and support programme to as many families as possible.

•  The Way Forward

Our priorities in the community remain home-based care, orphan intervention and food security. This is our core work. It is important that we continually remind ourselves of this and stay focused. However, we also aim to develop support groups and to look at more effective ways of dealing with gender discrimination and its devastating effects in this community. A major project in this forthcoming year will be the building of the Woza Moya Community Centre.

• Update - 8/8/2007

Kriben Pillay from the Leadership Centre, University of KwaZulu-Natal, recently conducted a special two-day community outreach workshop for the Woza Moya Project in the rural Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. Supported by author Steven Harrison, the workshop focused on discovering leadership skills and is envisaged as the first part of an on-going youth leadership development programme in an area that has been devastated by Aids-related deaths.

Kriben worked with 13 scholars and young adults, many coming from single parent homes; one of the scholars was recently orphaned when her mother died in April this year.Using experiential learning activities and taking the approach of working from within, there was very little theory (except for theory that came with reflection). However, Kriben found that the group brought forth notions of leadership and ensemble working that has only really surfaced in organizational learning fairly recently. The group displayed amazing creativity in activities that ranged from role-play, drawing to choral singing.

Woza Moya's founder and director, Sue Hedden, opened the workshop by giving some background to Steven Harrison's involvement in Woza Moya through the charity All Together Now International. . A copy of The Happy Child was given to the principal of the local school which selected the students for the workshop.

Woza Moya began as a project within the nearby Buddhist Retreat Centre, which has developed a special relationship with the Christian Zulu-speaking community over the last 27 years.

You can help by donating to All Together Now International for the Wozu Moya Project.