Winner — Investing in Life (external HIV/Aids policy at grassroots): De Beers Group’s The Integrated Child Care Programme: The Galeshewe Isibindi Project
The sparsely populated Northern Cape is known for the diamonds it delivers. Mining these precious stones takes blood, tears, sweat and a lot of patience. But for De Beers, the diamond mining giant of the world, diamonds are not only to be found in the soil of the province, but also among its people.
Despite its low population figure, the Northern Cape records some of the highest levels of social pathology and crime in the country. The causes include weak family structures and fragile community networks. De Beers says its research shows that the burden of dealing with family trouble falls disproportionately on women and children and into this fractured social environment comes the problem of HIV/Aids.
One of the struggling communities is Galeshewe in Kimberley. It is here that the mining group implemented its innovative Isibindi or ‘courage” model. Isibindi is a community-based child and youth care response to the HIV/Aids crisis in the province and the country. The project is a collaboration between De Beers, the National Association of Child Care Workers and the Northern Cape department of social development.
The programme, which depends on the work of volunteers, polishes the rough diamonds in Kimberley through training.
The project won the Investing in Life Award for its innovative approach to combating the pandemic in the community the company serves and for its reach at a grassroots level. Investing judges said De Beers is using professionals to make an impact at ground level and commented that the company works in one of the most difficult neighbourhoods, Galeshewe, in South Africa.
‘The company’s investment in people remains a core focus of its commitment and is a key area of its campaign against HIV/Aids,” it says. ‘Community partnerships are good and should be encouraged to expand beyond the geographical areas in which they operate.”
The group says that, despite the fact South Africa has one of the best legal frameworks and many policies in place to protect and develop children, there are serious gaps between policy and service delivery.
‘As the affects of HIV/Aids are felt more keenly, increasingly children are falling through the gaps,” says De Beers. Although corporate donors cannot fulfil the role of government, they can respond swiftly in situations where the government does not have the capacity to provide an immediate solution.
It is in this context — and in an attempt to align the De Beers Fund social investment strategy — that the company began engaging South Africa’s department of social services and population development and key service providers, such as the National Association of Child Care Workers, says De Beers Fund communications manager Paul Pereira. The result is the company’s Isibindi model, which is being used in Galeshewe. Since 2004 De Beers has committed R1,8million to the implementation of the project in the Kimberley region.
Pereira says the Isibindi model has the full backing of government, to the extent that it is prepared to pay the long-term running costs of the programme and fund the roll-out to other provinces.
Galeshewe is made up of a mix of settlements, some of them long-established areas that are home to the working populations and emerging lower-middle class. Other communities in the neighbourhood include fast-growing squatter settlements, which provide little more than basic shelter and rudimentary services to dispossessed and marginalised communities.
Donkerhoek, an informal settlement inside Galeshewe, was chosen as the first site for the roll-out of Isibindi by the project’s partners. Although the settlement has received extensive infrastructure investment through the Galeshewe Urban Renewal Programme, Pereira says the need for integrated childcare is growing.
‘The vision of the programme is an exciting one, seeking to bring to scale successful models of community-based childcare pioneered by an experienced welfare NGO in South Africa,” says Pereira. ‘It is built on the principle of partnership.”
The model works like this: stakeholders, such as community leaders, state departments, residential facilities and community-based organisations, are identified and a needs assessment of the community is done through meetings and presentations. Through the interaction, partnerships are set up, sites identified and a steering committee chosen.
Once the initiation phase of the project is complete, a requisite number of trained community childcare and youthcare workers are selected. They are allocated and deployed to clusters of families who live near to the worker, who is trained in accountability mechanisms.
De Beers’s partner, the National Association of Child Care Workers, is responsible for training the workers and monitors them for the first two years.
‘In many cases the programme is rolled out at a physical structure, to which the children go on a daily basis for nutritional and educational support,” says Pereira.
Such a facility is being designed for Donkerhoek and it will act as a prototype for other centres. The facility will house the administrative components of the agency, which delivers services to the children. Parenting skills will be taught to children acting as household heads. Attached to the facility will be a ‘safe park” with equipment where children can play, do homework, have private discussions and where babysitting services can be provided.
A reality the programme has to face is high volunteer dropout rates. Pereira says the project has circumvented this by paying volunteers a monthly stipend.
The Isibindi partners estimate that 500 orphans and vulnerable children from 125 families have benefited already from the project. Once a family or household is stabilised, volunteers are able to move on to other families, keeping up the continuity of the project and becoming a permanent resource for the community.
‘Isibindi has made a difference in the Donkerhoek community in a short space of time,” says Pereira.