Courtney Thompson: October 2014

Sawubona from Kwazulu Natal, South Africa !!

Its hard to believe I've been in this beautiful country for almost a month now... Ningani? (how are you in Zulu)

Let me give you a short overview of what I've been up to since I've been here.

WEEK 1: We arrived at Durban International airport were we were greeted by Tracey who is our In Country Manager, she split us into our teams and some of us headed to The Valley Trust (TVT) where we will be staying for the duration of our stay. Another team went into Inner Durban where they will be based and the final team went to their base at Lilly of the Valley.

Week 1 was also our training weekend where all three teams met at the TVT for training on various aspects that we may come across while in our projects. This week was also a great opportunity to interact with the teams we will be spending most of our time with, specifically the South African In country Volunteers who we only met this week.

WEEK 2: This was the first week that we actually went into our organisations to see the work that we will be doing.

So where am I i hear you ask ?

I am based with an Organisation called Hillcrest Aids Centre Trust (HACT). HACT is a multifaceted, holistic HIV/AIDS project that exists to provide unconditional love to all infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in a practical, sustainable way. It was founded in 1990 as part of a ministry of Hillcrest Methodist Church as response to the then Minister's conviction that the church needed to respond to the emerging HIV pandemic. HACT have many projects all of which focus on three main aspects, Care, Poverty Alleviation and Prevention of new infections.

As a team of Five, Lungelo, Tshepo, Keziah, Abi and Myself we have been involved with two projects directly, the first one being the Feeding scheme that happens every two weeks, this project provides food parcels to around 40 families who have no other form of income and no way of accessing food. The feeding scheme is only a short term solution to hunger and HACT work with them to find a longer term solution's by helping them access grants or introduce them to their Income Generations schemes.

The other Project we have been involved with is the Children s Programme, were we go into support groups for children who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS either directly or Indirectly and we deliver lessons on various topics. e.g Healthy Eating, Growth and Development etc we also play games with them and even sing some songs :)

This work that we have been doing will continue for the remainder of my time here in South Africa.

WEEK 3: Again we were in HACT and the work was basically the same as the week before as I've previously mentioned, but this week myself and Tshepo went to a parenting Course delivered by a gentleman called Gavin Kruger. The main aim of this workshop was focusing on Parenting with Assurance. it was a very informative day and we were able to bring back the information we learnt and put it into some of our lesson plans. Saturday 18th October all three teams met at Spirit of Adventure to do some team building exercises. it was a really great day and it was awesome to catch up with the other two teams to hear all about their projects and see how they are all getting on personally.

WEEK 4: Has only really begun, Monday we were in HACT offices doing so admin to make sure that they had all the correct information about the children in the Support Groups, Tuesday we went out with Bongi on the Feeding Scheme for the second time, it was a blessing as usual. On Wednesday (today) we stayed at TVT and prepared a lesson plan regarding Growth and Development for the support group that we are going to tomorrow for children aged 4-11.

As a whole TVT team (28 of us) we have planned some extra projects to do outside our main projects so once they get started ill hopefully be able to tell you more about them in my next blog post....

Here is some Pictures of what I've been up to.