Many children in the townships grow up in orphanages due to the fact that their parents have died from hiv/aids. The first engagemant of Fadderfriends was to help out in the Baphumelele orphanage in the big township of Khayelitscha outside Capetown. This home was established in 2001 by Mrs Rosie Mashala, alias Mama Rosie. In 2004, when our group from Sweden visited there, the home accommodated some fifty children between five months and sixteen years of age, all in an area of no more than eighty square meters. The home itself was in very poor condition. Everyone in the group was very upset about the conditions these poor children were living under and we decided to set up a network, the purpose of which was to help out economically.
The street children project Jabulani Khakibos Kids with its home in Johannesburg, offers shelter, care and protection of orphans. Fadderfriends supports a group of younger children, who are brought in directly from the streets and taught fundamental skills such as hygiene and eating at a table. A young devoted couple cares of this group of former homeless children.
Today (2008) the Baphumelele Orphanage has some 125 children. The first little house has undergone repair and some more buildings have been added; one for younger children and one each for the older girls respectively boys. Decisions have also been made to try to fit the children into "family groups" with six to eight children in each such family, cared for by a "house mother". The orphanage nowadays also gets support by the Government of Capetown and also by other organizations and networks like ours, among others from Germany, Holland, Switzerland and the US. Fadderfriends' contribution alone helps to support six toddlers on an annual basis.
Little Angels Orphanage is located outside Johannesburg. The home was set up in the year of 2000 by a woman pastor, who died only some few years later. Her important task was carried on by her then twelve years old daughter Rejoice and her grandmother. Today, Rejoice has finished secondary school and wants to study to become a nurse. Some of the ten children live in a little house and the older ones in a simple corrugated sheeting construction.
Secondary school student Ntombi (Ntombolwandle Manzana) lives in Capetown. She wants to study to become an engineer. Fadderfriends helps out with school supplies and travels to school. She also gets some support from a US organization.
Children's Resourse Center (CRC) started in the year of 1963 to help children in various townships to organize themselves in a "Children's Movement". We support a special project within the CRC, "The Girl Child Organization". The main purpose of this subgroup is to encourage and empower girls in order to become stronger and thus able to resist the violent township world, ruled by men.
During one year Fadderfriends also supported an ecological growing project in a youth prison of Capetown.
