WHAT WE DO

Monthly Grants Once-Off Grants Capacity Building After School Programs Networking

Groceries. Water and electricity. Clothing. Medicine. These ongoing expenses are familiar to any parent or caregiver of children, and these are some of the very things covered by CHOSA’s monthly grants. Five of our partners (two preschools, one children’s home, one girls’ empowerment program, and one housing/scholarship fund) receive monthly deposits to use for the benefit of the children and families in their care. The funds assist communities with their day-to-day operations in order to provide safe and nurturing homes and experiences for their children.

CHOSA grants are 100% unrestricted. CHOSA’s on-ground team facilitates a process where projects are required to account for the funding after it is spent, but retain the ability to decide how best to spend the money. The most important job of our on-ground team is building and sustaining open and trusting relationships with the organizations we support.

When a community member has an idea that will enrich the lives of vulnerable children, we love to help. We have awarded smaller, one-time grants to a diverse array of projects, such as the following:

A STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) camp for young girls
A township baseball academy for disadvantaged boys and girls
Youth empowerment through spoken word poetry and hip hop
Emergency supplies for a community centre that had been maliciously attacked
Most recently, supplies for a community gardening initiative

Our once-off grants enable us to broaden our impact in Cape Town’s impoverished communities.

Most of the projects we serve were started by community members with no formal training in nonprofit management, who simply saw a need in their community and responded to it. In most cases, these women and men opened their very homes to children in need, and before they knew it, realized they were running a safety home or pre-school. Because of this dynamic, one of CHOSA’s central roles is to build capacity in the women and men who staff our various partner projects. With regular visits to projects, our staff impart knowledge ranging from early childhood development best practices to sound financial management. The goal is for each project to become increasingly self-sufficient and confident in their work.

One of the problems facing the communities we serve is a lack of extracurricular enrichment for children. CHOSA works to fill this gap by providing after-school tutoring and mentoring programs at several children’s homes. These take place on a seasonal basis and are dependent on the support of volunteer tutors and mentors who come from both nearby communities and overseas to serve for a period of 3 months or more. Interested in volunteering? Click here!

CHOSA works with dozens of caring community members who are all trying to achieve the same goal of caring for the most vulnerable children in their communities. CHOSA networking events take place quarterly in an attempt to bring these hard-working women and men together to share best practices in their work with children, and to learn useful information. Our partners suggest a pertinent issue or topic, and CHOSA seeks out an expert in that issue to facilitate the event. Recent topics have included:
Transition-age youth, CPR and First Aid, Nutrition, Discipline, Reporting and dealing with abuse, and Organizational leadership and management.

CHOSA also provides networking support by linking projects with local donors and NGOs that offer resources beyond our scope.