WHO WE SERVE

Ongoing Partners

Past Partners

In past years, CHOSA has partnered with the following projects to provide ongoing support and monthly grants:

• Baphumelele Children’s Home: The home which inspired the founding of CHOSA – an emergency place of safety for abandoned children, and a permanent home for children who have been orphaned.
• Emasithandane Children’s Organisation: a home for orphaned and vulnerable children founded nearly 3 decades ago, providing care for over 35 children at a time.
• Mandela Park Children’s Committee: a community who organized first against illegal evictions and other housing issues, and later founded the first not-for-profit daycare and pre-school in their community.
• Qaqambani Safe Home: a home providing short-term emergency housing and care for children who have suffered from abuse or neglect, as well as long-term foster care for several children.
• Richmond Farm Community/Amandla Esizwe: an informal settlement committed to empowering and educating their youth through a daycare center and community garden
• Stars of Today: a community-run dance, drama, and debate group for teens living in the informal settlement of Kosovo, Phillipi.
• TT Section Community/SA Beware: an after-school program for young people living in one of Khayelitsha’s informal settlements to learn and perform traditional Tswana and Xhosa dances.
• Philani Family Fund: philani Family Fund was started in 2005 by a group of exchange student-volunteers from the United States who decided to assist impoverished families from the Philani Outreach Program. The volunteers not only wanted to raise funds and build homes, but two of them, Rob Rosenbaum and Dianna Kane, decided to start a fund to assist more disadvantaged families. Philani Family Fund is now an integrated Project at the Philani Nutrition Centre. Sponsored by CHOSA, it supplements the outreach and Orphaned and Vulnerable Children Programs at Philani.
• QQ Section Children’s Committee: it all started with public community meetings; countless General Meetings with most households present from the entire community to discuss the needs of their children. Eventually, each QQ Section household pitched in five Rand to build a Community Creche (a daycare and pre-school) and to install the first toilet in the entire settlement.
• Bathandwa Day and Night Care Centre: situated in Mandela Park, Khayelitsha, Bathandwa Day and Night Care Centre was founded by Mrs. Virginia and Mr. Oliver Simelela in 2000. In that year, Virginia found a child wandering the streets who had been left orphaned and destitute after domestic violence took the life of the child’s mother. Virginia’s love for children moved her to take the child in. Soon after, other members of the community and provincial social workers were referring more abandoned and/or orphaned children to her home.
• Ithemba Lempumelelo: Ithemba Lempumelelo is a skills development centre for children in under-resourced communities. We work with children who are physically disabled and impaired and teach them art skills like painting, ceramic designs and creative thinking that will allow them to pursue job opportunities.
• Sikhululekile Reading Development and Life Skills: Sikhulukile Reading Development and Life Skills is an after-school program based in the township of Philippi that aims to provide academic support, life skills training, and opportunities for healthy friendships in a safe and uplifting after-school environment. Currently we serve 60 students in grades 4-6 through our after-school tutoring program, and 60 additional students ages 8-14 in our reading club aiming for learners to publish their own books. We  offered educational support in both Xhosa and English.
• Skye’s Wooden Spoon: Skye’s Wooden Spoon based in Eastridge, Mitchell Plain and Vosho Endlovini, Khayelitsha. The initiatives include a feeding scheme based in Vosho that feeds approximately 250 people three days a week (700 meals a week), early childhood developmental center, a food garden and outreach programmes. The project deals with various case work, including assisting families with birth certificates and placing children back in schools. In Mitchell Plain, we runs an after-school program, outreach programs, recreational initiatives such as dance group, and refers various cases to different departments and networks. We seeks to aid children and communities through a holistic approach.
• Inzamezethu Educare Centre: Inzamezethu Educare Centre is an ECD and afterschool centre that showers children with the love and care that they need to thrive. We cater for ages 0 – 6 in the ECD and ages 8 – 18 in the afterschool programme. Our teachers and volunteers take extra care to ensure each child is taken care of in their own unique way. We also provide nutritious daily meals to all our children and the community around us.
• Ithemba Lempumelelo: Ithemba Lempumelelo is a skills development centre for children in under-resourced communities. We work with children who are physically disabled and impaired and teach them art skills like painting, ceramic designs and creative thinking that will allow them to pursue job opportunities.
• Abaphumeleli Place of Safety: Abaphumeleli was established as a place of safety for vulnerable children in 2004 by founder and director Evelyn Makasi. Located in Ilitha Park, Khayelitsha, Abaphumeleli houses children who have been abused or neglected, whose parents have passed away, or who otherwise have no one to look after them. Many of the children are HIV-positive. At present, 33 children live in two homes situated side-by-side: one that houses Evelyn, her husband, and the older children, and one that houses the younger children and their caregivers.

Once-off Grants

Over the years, CHOSA has provided once-off grants to fund specific needs at the following projects:

• Amandla Ku Lutsha: a soccer league using the sport as a tool to provide education and life skills to youth in residential care and from disadvantaged communities.
• Baphumelele Educare Centre: a holistic early childcare facility serving the Khayelitsha community.
• Joe Slovo Daycare Centre: one of the only community-run daycare centres serving an informal settlement of over 10,000 people, which also ran a community vegetable garden.
• Jujurha Preschool in Bhulungula: an early childhood education provider in one of the most remote and un-resourced villages in the Eastern Cape province.
• Kennedy Road Development Committee: a community-run daycare and feeding center who were granted emergency funds in the aftermath of a malicious attack.
• Philippi Angels Township Baseball Academy: the first baseball team from the Black townships to compete in the Baseball Association of Western Province.
• Soundz of the South: a network of activists who use hip-hop and poetry to empower young people.
• Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers: a group of evicted families who organized one of the
  longest civil disobedience road occupations in South African history.