What is the end of childhood?
The death of parents automatically pushes the next generation up to head the family. But what if the next generation are still children, and there are no elder relatives to step in and take responsibility? Kwaze Kwaza, Sunrise House, helps some of them.
Grace Sibeko heads a team of volunteers providing Home-Based Care for terminally ill patients in Katlehong South and Zonke Zizwe Informal settlement. Parents die, and children are left behind to fend for themselves. Grace and her helpers run 2 creches, for 45 and 20 children, (some of whom live with their elderly grandparents) and they give support for 7 households of children alone. These children have no money and therefore no food except what Kwaze Kwaza Centre can give them.
On 16th February members of St Dunstan's Social Outreach Committee, together with other concerned parishioners, were led by Lynn Coull to visit Grace and her team at Kwaze Kwaza. It is a small breeze block house, with a kitchen and office behind a larger room for the creche. Grace told us how the home based care scheme started in 1997, and has grown, at first with no funding at all. In 2000 the governement began providing some cash: 10 of the volunteers receive some money, the rest (22) still work for nothing. The Bishop Simeon Nkoane Trust gives R 600 a month for food. Governmentfunds provide food for the sick at home but not the creche.
Money in needed for other things: to take patients to the hospital; for older children to get to the distant high school - R5 a day, which Lynn finds for them; to help those grannies who do not have pensions to care for their little ones; money is needed for electricity cards in children's households; for electricity cards in children's households; for funeral expenses. Four small boys lost their mother, and succeeded in gathering R 1000 from donations and small gifts during weeks of perseverence; it was still not enough, for the most modest funeral, but Lynn Coull was able to make up the shortfall of R 450 from the Hardship Fund.
The greatest need at Kwaze Kwaza is FOOD; the creches; the creches and the child-headed families need food both at home and at school. Many of these children eat only once in 24 hours. Mielie-pap with water is not a nourishing diet.
Clothes are needed, casual clothes as well as school uniforms. School stationery is needed; children may find themselves excluded from certain classes for lack of the proper equipment.
Kwaze Kwaza has only one toilet for which all must queue. A simple basic need is 5- litre plastic containers that can be used as potties.
A reading in St Matthew's Gospel says it all: "When, Lord, did we see you hungry and fed you, or thirsty and gave you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and clothed you? When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visited you?" The king will reply, "I tell you whenever you did this for one of these little ones, you did it for me."
If you are interested in helping with this project please contact the Cathedral Office on +27 (011) 421-2992.
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Fr. David Bannerman with Grace Sibeko from Kwaze Kwaza
Fr. David Bannerman, Lynn Coull and the Sisters discuss then needs of Kwaze Kwaza with some of the grannies.
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