Mmametlhake Family Care Centre News

 

Progress Report June to August 2011

True Love Waits

This quarter we had successful True Love Waits Campaigns in the surrounding village of Mmametlhake.

Teenage Pregnancy Prevention

We are also doing a teenage pregnancy awareness program at the local schools in combination with the True Love Waits program.

Home Based Care

Our home based care workers and counselors continue to dedicate themselves to caring for the HIV positive members of the surrounding villages.

PDFPlease download the full report (130 Kb)

 

HIV/AIDS Campaign Report for Mmametlhake family Care Centre: 2010.

We like to take this privilege to thank you for all your enormous support and courage towards the progress of the Mmametlhake family care centre, we have been able to rich our objectives in terms of prevention programme and education this month, we had a wonderful HIV/AIDS Campaign aimed at all ages in the two respective villages, Phake and Spispent. According to our feasibility study we were aware that the issue of violence against children "girls" and women in the village which contributed to the spread to HIV/AIDS.

We have make use of the opportunity presented to us by the ward councillor Mr Makhubela. I must confess that the campaign went beyond our expectation; it was extremely challenging to the community. Our main aim it was to challenge the community about HIV/AIDS and also encourage them to go for testing, for the campaign to be affective we arranged three of our HIV/AIDS client to join us and they were very excited and said to us we have been waited for time such as this to disclose our status to the community, while speaking the other two ladies ask to disclosed their status also and those we did not arrange with them but they said is about time people know the reality and the impact of HIV/AIDS. It was for the first time in the community to have someone disclosing her status in public and people were shocked when they listen to them as they tell their story.

All of this two communities we have realise that the issue of HIV/AIDS it is still a mystery or they are still so ignorant about it, the reason been they don't want to talk about this kind of disease, so they just say it is witchcraft or someone had sex with a widow while still mourning for her husband there is no such thing called HIV/AIDS.

What encouraged us the most we had different people with different story telling about how they contracted this disease, one of them is a 42 years she was diagnosed in 2005 after giving birth using an operation, by then she was not yet legally married, but after telling the father of her child they went to home affairs and signed, what she told the crowd was that her husband said I will love until the end.

The other one was a granny 64 years she also disclosed here status to the public and her story, she contracted HIV while taking care of her daughter, and she was bathing here doing everything. When she asked her about her illness she said she don't know what is happening about her health until she died, after some months she started to get sick and she went to hospital where she was diagnosed HIV+ . Those stories made us realise that there is still work to be done in the community regarding education. The councillor has promised us to host a community meeting and will be addressing the community, it will happen next year. So for us it is still a privilege to be able to win the heart of the community councillor, now we know that we have a better access to the community.

We also thank our local church Waterkloof Baptist church for sponsoring the Christmas party for 65 kids this year; we had a wonderful party, the kids enjoyed every minutes of it when presenting gifts to them.

For all this we thank God for allowing us to be part of his plan and also for you for supporting us all the way.

Mmametlhake World Cup Camp Report

PDFPrimary School Educator Evaluation Comments (PDF document)

We at Mmametlhake Family Care Centre just completed a four week day camp held during the World Cup school holidays.  Over the course of the four weeks, the Mmametlhake World Cup Camp worked with 256 fifth and sixth grade learners from Dipere, Nkotolane, Tlhame and Tabane Primary Schools in Mmametlhake.

Each week we focused on teaching four life skill lessons through Bible stories, dramas, songs, games, crafts and other activities. Monday, we came with the lesson “I am Special” in which campers learned about positive self-esteem and how to celebrate their uniqueness. Tuesday, we shared “I Can Communicate,” talking about good and bad communication, ways to be better communicators and how to share feelings. On Wednesday we taught “I Can Make Good Choices,” sharing how to recognize good choices and how to make the best choice. The final day, Thursday, campers learned “I Can Reach My Goals,” in which we shared how to set goals and make a plan to reach those goals.
Throughout these weeks we were helped by 27 amazing high school learners from Mmametlhake High School and Manoka High School.

These high school learners acted as camp counselors, leading all games and activities. Before beginning their work as camp counselors, they participated in two days of leadership training. During this training, learners took part in activities designed to teach leadership and communication skills. After making the commitment to participate in the four weeks of the camp, learners spent the remaining time of the training preparing camp activities. Throughout the camp, we were privileged to watch these learners grow and transform into strong leaders dedicated to building up the fifth and sixth grade learners we worked with. We are all confident that they will move on to great things in the coming years and believe this experience will have a great impact on that future.

We were pleased to see a rich outpouring from our community to help with the camp. The four primary schools we worked with all gave us full use of school premises for the camp and helped advertise the camp with their learners. Both participating high schools, assisted in the recruitment of our excellent counselors. Many people from the area helped in providing transport of materials, provided services for free and helped by joining us on a daily basis at the camp. In addition, five gifted women from the community gave their services as cooks for the full four weeks, cooking both breakfast and lunch for around a hundred people each day.

In addition to the rich outpouring from our own community, we were also blessed to spend our second week of camp with youth from Waterkloof Baptist Church in Pretoria. The service they lent greatly enriched the camp. With them they brought songs, dances, games, willing spirits, determined attitudes and the love God; all of which will stick in the hearts and minds of the campers for years to come.

Already we have received a lot of positive feedback from participating educators and community stakeholders. There is great interest from the schools in partnering with the care centre for future holiday camps and in other endeavors.

For now, our campers can be found walking the roads of Mmametlhake singing camp songs and sharing with each other the lessons that they learned. And our camp counselors keep asking what and when is the next event, with a heartfelt “we miss camp.”

We are grateful to the US Peace Corps for providing grant funding through PEPFAR and to Waterkloof Baptist Church for a generous donation of R10,000.

We are looking forward to seeing the impact that the Mmametlhake World Cup Camp will have on our community.