Hillcrest AIDS Centre Trust Plant Nursery

General information

Our projects include:

HIV awareness and education:
Our Education Department aims to educate people of all ages about HIV/AIDS and its related issues. They make presentations at work-places and schools, and they facilitate life-skills and peer-education programmes in both primary and high schools in several communities. We believe that, in order to break through the rich stigma that exists around a HIV diagnosis, education is the key, and that we must continuously increase the dialogue around HIV/AIDS at the home, school, community and provincial level.

HIV counseling and testing:
We have a team of counselors who conduct roughly 650 HIV tests per month at various locations including our out-patients department, within our respite unit, out in the community, and at work-places. Our conviction is that if everyone in the communities we serve would test, know their status, and seek treatment if HIV-positive, then we would see a dramatic decrease in the number of people presenting at our Respite Unit with terminal AIDS. We also conduct training modules for people who will be starting ARV medication, and we conduct ARV referrals.

Income Generation:
We have a number of income generation projects including the Woza Moya Merchants of Marvel Craft Store, and the Izingadi Zethemba (Gardens of Hope) nursery. Woza Moya provides an income to 160 crafters (includes pottery, beadwork, sewing, crocheting, fabric painting and wirework) that are supported by the funds raised through craft sales, and Izingadi Zethemba has used nursery sale profits to start over 180 vegetable gardens in homes and schools so that people can grow their own vegetables and sell the spare produce to make an income. All of the community members who are supported through the income generation projects are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and are living under poverty. We provide an opportunity for them to earn an income each month.

Respite Unit:
We have an onsite 24-bed respite unit for people with advanced terminal AIDS, and whilst most people come to our unit expecting to die, amazingly roughly 60% of them end up recovering and being discharged – thanks to the love and care provided by our dedicated team of staff and volunteers. The Respite Unit is staffed by dedicated nurses and home-based carers and care is provided completely free of charge to our patients. Criteria for entry is that patients must have a terminal illness, must be bed-ridden, and must have no care-giver at home. The unit provides an environment of love and acceptance, in which a patient can either be nursed back to health and then initiated onto ARV medication, or can die with dignity and in as much comfort as possible.

Home-Based Care:
We provide stipends to roughly 25 home-based carers who work in their communities to provide basic medical care to people suffering from HIV/AIDS. These carers refer people from their communities to receive counseling and testing in our out-patients department, or to be admitted in the respite unit if they are terminally ill. Once a patient is discharged from the respite unit, home-based carers will follow up that patient with home visits to ensure their health continues to improve and to monitor any complications or set-backs they may face post-discharge.

Grannie Support Groups:
We have 28 Grannie Support Groups across five different communities, of which roughly 1400 Grandmothers are members. The groups meet regularly to support each other in their plight as Grandmothers affected by HIV/AIDS – in most cases having lost their children to AIDS and being left as the sole care-giver for several Grandchildren. The groups are engaged in many stress-alleviation and skills-development activities including sports and literacy training.

Feeding Scheme:
We provide food parcels twice a month to 40 families who have no other form of income and no way of accessing food. We view this as a short-term intervention designed to meet an immediate need – hunger. Once a family is on the feeding scheme, we work with them to find a longer-term solution to meet their needs. This solution could be to help them access a social grant, it could be to bring them into our income generation project and train them up as a crafter, or it could be to build them a vegetable garden from which they can grow food and sell the surplus to make an income. Most families are ready to move off the feeding scheme after about 6 months, and we then bring another desperately needy family onto the scheme.

Clothing Scheme:
Roughly 20 families make a weekly income through our clothing scheme. People donate us clothes that they no longer want or need, and we sort those clothes into 40 bags each week. The families collect a bag of clothes and they then sell those clothes either at the Centre (to our own staff and each other) or in their community. Each bag of clothes can bring in between R300 and R500 for a family. The first bag is provided free of charge, and all subsequent bags are purchased for R10 – encouraging ‘buy in’ from the families and working against a hand-out mentality.

School Fee Fund:
We provide school uniforms and cover school fees for children who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and are living under poverty. To date we have covered school fees for 80 children and we have provided school uniforms for 94 children.

All these projects work together to provide a holistic response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic within our local communities.