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0 viewsThe recent UNICEF report paints a grim portrait of life for the 19 million children in South Africa. Most live in poverty; almost two million lack the basics, such as clean water and sanitation – five million are HIV-positive. Every four out of 10 children live in homes where no-one is employed and in extreme cases, this figure escalates to seven in 10. The dire circumstances in which our children live are symptomatic of the plight of women in South Africa. If most young mothers are poor, HIV-positive and unemployed – what does the future hold for their children?
This plagued Dr Paul Roux who started working as a paediatrician at Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) in the mid-1980s. As his paediatric ward increasingly felt the impact of HIV, Roux rallied his colleagues to start an intervention that helped alleviate the burden of families affected by HIV. In 1998, Roux, Lorraine Vivian, Elelwani Ramugondo and Hilary-Ann Van Wyk started the Kidzpositive Family Trust. Kidzpositive provides money to entrench additional support for children around health facilities in the Western Cape that lack services such as mental health-care, physiotherapy, pharmaceutical services – access to Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatment – or even fun health-focused recreational activities.
One of the oldest Kidzpositive initiatives, the Positive Beadwork Project (PBP), started providing income generation opportunities for HIV-positive mothers with HIV-positive children admitted to the paediatric ward at GSH in 2001. Mothers receive raw materials and are taught bead-working skills to produce large orders of small beaded conference tags, pen covers and pins of HIV iconography or country flags from around the world. Mothers earn money while they see to their own health and the health of their children.
The 100 mothers enrolled currently in the programme meet the demand for sales from around the world that average R15 000 a fortnight. Mothers earn additional income between R140 to R160 a week, the amount not being dependent on the rate of incoming orders. They are paid for work completed, rather than work sold. Kidzpositive subsidises this in the event that orders do not cover the stipends. Irrespective of the responsibility to keep orders coming in, PBP creates a stable financial environment for mothers. Orders are sustained by drawing on the support of corporates or its school and church networks from more than 10 countries. School children in particular have fun going online and designing their own beaded pins on the PBP website.
Some might argue that the market for beadwork related to HIV/AIDS is over-saturated or suffering from donor fatigue. PBP however specialises in highly sophisticated beadwork. This simple model has profound consequences by being fully integrated into the HIV Family Clinic at GSH. Women can earn money in a space where their children are safe and where professional medical and counselling services are easily accessible. Over and above serving a financial need, PBP serves an important psychosocial need of vulnerable mothers too. The informal support received from working alongside other mothers to fill orders through sharing, talking, laughing and crying with those who understand makes all the difference.
The financial and social benefits mothers reap each week in PBP are in fact an incentive to visit the hospital regularly. This translates into the hospital maintaining promising adherence rates to ARV treatment.
PBP shows government that to address HIV, big budgets are not always necessary.
Rhoda Kadalie and Candice Jansen. Visit impumelelo.org.za for more information about the ingenious ways South Africans are solving public problems. Follow @ImpumeleloInnov