ETAFENI

L’Etafeni Trust, is situated in Nyanga, one of the oldest black townships in Cape Town. The Etafeni Trust, in partnership with the local community, has built a multi-purpose Day Care Centre in Nyanga which takes into account the needs of vulnerable children, the needs of those who care for them, and the needs of the community who will be their safety net. With over 12 different programmes, the Etafeni Centre is always busy and provides a beautiful space and shelter for members of the community.

Amongst the programmes, there is a preschool care for childrens, Women empowerment, Aids counselling, food garden, social work and community development and more. An organic food garden and household food gardens provide food and a dietician is responsible for all malnourished children in Nyanga under the age of 5.
They also have 40 people affiliated to the association that are going through houses in the township and 20 working in the main Clinic in order to spot the people that could be in need for support.

Etafeni has been overwhelmed with requests for food parcels and has managed to secure some funds to provide food parcels, however they only managed to secure limited food parcels. The community served has high numbers of unemployment and hunger levels, as most of them are struggling with poverty and securing employment.

COVID-19 and the impact of lockdown, has had a demoralising outcome on already vulnerable families and children. Incomes have been lost, especially in the informal economy, and interruptions in social grant pay-outs in May further burdened poorer households. Cases of child abuse and domestic abuse have escalated since the announcement of the lockdown. The organisation is also struggling to secure Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the Community Health Workers as retailers have increased their prices and/or have ran out of PPE.

Initially planned to participate in Fit for Life, Fit for Work the funds sent by SOCAPS FUND will also participate in funding of food parcels which is the current emergency.

Keran went to visit the Etafini center in Nyanga Township to visit the association and participate in the training that SOCAPS Fund helped fund. The Fit for Work training lasts six weeks, for 16 people aged from 18 to 30 years old and focuses on the use of the office pack and other basic computer functionalities oriented to help them to find a job following this training.

The crisis is a particularly difficult time for Etafini and four members of their staff had to leave the association but today almost all of their activities have resumed: School for children aged from 2 to 6 years old, school support for children aged from 7 to 17 years old, training « Fit for work fit for life » program, therapy for abused children, group therapy for HIV positive women or victims of violence, kitchen providing between 100 and 300 meals per day.

In addition to these activities, Etafini’s teams continue their efforts in the field with the distribution of medicines within the community to avoid queues in clinics and the spread of the virus and also the development of common vegetable gardens in the community to help people to be self-sufficient.

The SOCAPS FUND donation made it possible to pay the salary of the tutor of the Fit for Life program but was also used during the crisis to provide provisions to the poorest families and to maintain the salaries of certain employees of the association.

In 2021, SOCAPS renewed its partnership with ETAFENI for the Income Generation program, which offers sewing workshops for unemployed women with AIDS to learn to sew and sell their work for an income.