In remote rural areas of South Africa the concept of HIV/AIDS is still widely misunderstood, heavily stigmatised and very little is being done to assist village people. We work through local organisations to identify those families that are most vulnerable and who are in greatest need of help - generally those headed by children or grandparents.

We want to help orphan families become self-reliant within their communities.

Supporting Vulnerable Families
In our South African projects the prime objective is to enable orphan and grandparent headed households to stay together. This means providing for their basic needs such as shelter, food, household utensils and clothing and ensuring they have access to medical care as well as providing access to Government run health programmes.

Ultimately we want the children we support to become self-reliant, so we ensure that they have access to education and training or are able to make a living from their land or by setting up a small enterprise.

We also provide social workers and local volunteers to provide support advice and encouragement. Many families are often illiterate so our staff help them to obtain
the necessary documents to access the state's social security system.
In this way we enable families to gradually move away from our support so that another family can benefit from our help.