The Beneficiaries
Tara Getty
Trustee, Africa Foundation
Co-Founder, Art for Africa
We are fortunate to have a home in an area of great natural beauty in the wilderness of South Africa's KwaZulu Natal. Working for some 15 years towards restoring and conserving this and other wilderness areas of Africa, we involve the surrounding communities, whose well-being is key to the future of these areas. However, the communities are home to a vast number of children left parentless or vulnerable through the scourge of HIV, AIDS and other diseases.
We are passionate about Africa Foundation, whose successful, sustainable programmes help alleviate the plight of these children and their extended families. With our support through primary healthcare and education to adulthood, real opportunities become available to them. Ikamva Labantu, our other chosen beneficiary - whose work is an urban reflection of our own - also provides invaluable support. By identifying, empowering and working with the 'local champions' in these impoverished rural and urban communities, we are opening up a real future for our young beneficiaries.
Read MoreAfrica Foundation
Africa Foundation is a charitable organisation set up 16 years ago, working in partnership with the eco-tourism industry in Africa to empower rural African communities through sustainable development projects.
The Foundation believes that communities are most effectively helped if they are empowered to help themselves. Consequently, Africa Foundation has evolved a unique way of working with these communities across South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana and Namibia. As a result, the Foundation has changed the lives of thousands of people.
Africa Foundation focuses its work in three main areas: education, healthcare and water provision, and income-generating activities. The Foundation funds and facilitates the building of schools and clinics, provides access to clean water, helps young community leaders through university, brings new technologies to deprived communities and helps them start new enterprises. It also provides care and support for many hundreds of orphaned and vulnerable children.
The Foundation believes that long-term sustainability is better than short-term largesse. It works within its means, only providing funding for projects that are needed and can be delivered on a sustainable basis - constantly monitoring and evaluating everything it does to ensure that all supporters' money is effectively and efficiently employed. Working directly with influential individuals (local champions) to identify what the people feel they need, Africa Foundation's teams on the ground encourage the communities to take ownership of the projects - ensuring success and long-term sustainability.
Ikamva Labantu
The role of Ikamva Labantu is to nurture unsupported children who live with parents or families who cannot provide them with adequate care. Community Angels identify orphaned and vulnerable children in their communities. They seek out children who live with parents suffering from HIV/AIDS or other diseases, child-headed families, frail grandparents and / or others who are in socially and economically challenged situations. They provide food, basic care, schooling support, and assistance with grant applications, household supervision and basic home-based care. Ikamva Labantu strives to keep children within their own families as long as possible.
Community Angels is just one of the initiatives run by Ikamva Labantu. Set up in the late 1960's at the height of South African apartheid, Helen Lieberman and other community social activists responded to the unjust socio-political conditions by identifying and creating survival initiatives in the Western Cape. This led to a groundswell of similar initiatives being established in other parts of the country. Due to this growth it became necessary to formalise the coordination of these initiatives. In 1992, Ikamva Labantu (The Future of our Nation) was launched as a non-governmental and non-profit organisation.