Projects
No Mirrors Youth Camp - March 2012
This was a life changing experience for most of the young people involved. It was a camp that focused on the fundamental issues facing young South Africans from rural South Arica which accounts majority of the South African population and statistically stand a higher chance of contracting HIV than anywhere else in the world.
This camp was designed to create a dialogue and around the topic of HIV and Teenage pregnancies while teaching skills such as team work, communication and goal setting. At the end of the camp the feedback suggested we had accomplished far and beyond our goals.
Young people in the oral evaluation and the evaluation forms indicated a great deal of enthusiasm and inspiration to take charge of their lives and future and to educate people back home about HIV.
A Dose of Happiness - December 2012
South Africa has in the recent years suffered a major blow with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Cancer, TB and other different kinds of diseases and social illnesses. KwaZulu Natal, unfortunately, is no exception or immune to these issues. Lots of children and adolescents live in affected and infected communities. This has necessitated the development and growth of orphanages, home-based care centres, homes and centres for the misplaced, homeless and vulnerable children. The centres provide amongst others shelter, educational support, clothing, food and nutrition and improvement of personal and family livelihoods.
Due to immense work that the networks of volunteers do for the children, very often it is not easy to concentrate on their emotional therapeutic needs. Some of these youth who do not get a holistic support, are found with traces of mental instability created by the baggage that they carried from their childhood.
Sober Hearts Africa has thus developed a day program called A dose of Happiness that will engage the young people in a number of edutainment activities which are able to bring this youth hope, joy and laughter.
A dose of happiness is not only about instilling a sense of joy and laughter, but also about providing a therapy to these youth who might otherwise feel separated from the community system or unable to do certain things.
The project "A Dose of Happiness" was launched in December 2012 but we could not take photographs because of the sensitive nature of the children. We asked our friends and family to donate what they could and we dug into our pockets and asked a shelter in Durban for HIV positive infants and children what they needed most and it was diapers we ended up buying and spent a day playing with the children, bathed them, fed and said goodbye with our hearts heavy, wishing we could have done more.
This is a continuous project, one that we would like to nourish and develop. A day to spread some joy.
During the camp we played a game of show of hands and in our visual survey, it appeared that everyone of the 60 young people at camp personally knew more than one person living with the HIV virus and the participants were between the ages of 16 and 19. We also discussed and busted allot of myths about the virus, for example, when we asked the participants in a fun and easy going environment what they knew about HIV transmission, one girl said she heard that you cannot contract the virus if you have sex standing.
In the debrief these were the most popular lessons acquired by the participants:
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Sexual responsibility
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An induced desire to try new things with confidence
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They are not defined by their circumstances but rather by their actions and the chose to be positive
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The importance of team work
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The value of effective communication
There were tears, hugs and thank you's when it was time to say goodbye but more than that a long lasting effect of positive change.
We are crowd funding for a project called Chords of Compassion.