Etafeni is a multi-purpose centre for children affected by AIDS and their caregivers in Nyanga, Cape Town, South Africa
Even with anti-retroviral therapy, there will be millions of children in South Africa without parents in a few years time. We need to provide these children with care so that they have the chance to grow into responsible adults who are capable of feeling for others and contributing to society.
A model of how we can do this is being pioneered in Nyanga, a township outside Cape Town, by the Etafeni Day Care Centre Trust. A small grassroots community-based organisation, the Etafeni Playgroup Project, formed a Trust together with LifeLine/Childline Western Cape some years ago when it became apparent that children in the Nyanga community were losing their parents to AIDS-related illnesses. Almost 28% of the local population in Nyanga is infected with the HI Virus.
The aim of the Trust is to build capacity in the local community in Nyanga – as well as building a multi-purpose day care centre to sustain and support the community in their holistic care for children affected by AIDS.
The site on Sihume Road, sold to the Trust at a nominal price by the City of Cape Town, has been prepared and the Centre is being built. The Centre is a base to support the caregivers of children who have been affected by AIDS so that the children are able to stay in their homes, at their schools and in their familiar community during their parents’ illness and after their parents’ death. The local community around the centre has been trained in HIV/AIDS information and awareness, many of the Etafeni Playgroup Project members have been through the LifeLine and Childline counsellor training (more are still to do the training) and a group of seventeen local patient advocates/child care workers have been trained, deployed and funded.
A group of local unemployed men and women are being trained as builders: making blocks, digging the foundations, laying the floor slabs, building, plastering and painting the walls of the preschool, office block, Mothers and Infants Centre and, in 2006, the kitchen and dining complex. They receive wages as well as learning a skill. The building equipment will be rented out to them when the centre is completed so that they will be able to run their own small construction business.
The Centre offers a spectrum of services: a preschool, a vegetable garden (for producing food for the centre but also to train community members in food gardening), a nutrition programme, an AIDS Counsellor programme, income-generating activities (beadwork and sewing), supervised homework and afterschool care, a playground, counselling and training facilities and space for rest and quiet.
The centre is beautiful but inexpensively built. White-washed walls, a fountain, lawns, fruit trees and skilled, loving “mothers” create a home from home for children affected by AIDS and their caregivers.