The sole purpose of the Holy Cross Children’s Trust is to provide consistent, meaningful and long term support to children in a rural area in South Africa who:

• have AIDS or are HIV positive
• have become orphans through AIDS, or
• are the child head of a family.

Specifically, the Charity provides funding for a range of programmes and projects developed by Sister Pricilla Dlamini. These programmes currently support some 2,500 orphaned children and 1,000 child headed families in a 50 square kilometre, rural area surrounding The Holy Cross Hospice in Emoyeni, KwaZulu-Natal South Africa . The incidence of AIDS/HIV in this area is amongst the highest in the world and the region has been declared an Aids Pandemic Disaster Zone.

The Charity is focused on providing targeted support for the children in this area. In doing so, we believe we can make a dramatic impact on the lives of the children in this community. Donors can be assured that their contributions make a real difference.

The Trustees are not paid and virtually all other services used by the Trust are either given at no cost or at the personal expense of the individual Trustee. As a consequence, all funds raised flow virtually entirely through to support the programmes for the ultimate beneficiaries – the children.

The Holy Cross Children’s Trust was formed on 20th of November 2002 and was granted charitable status by the Charities Commissioner for England and Wales on 24th of January 2003 (Registration number 1095593).

Popularity: 63% [?]

Imagine you are seven years old and watching your parents die of AIDS.

Most people are aware of the chilling facts of AIDS in Africa. What is not immediately evident is its knock on effects. Whole families of children – some infected by the virus, others not – are being orphaned in their thousands. Children are the innocent victims of AIDS.

The child-headed family phenomenon through AIDS is growing daily in rural South Africa as a whole generation of parents is wiped out. It means the older children must take on the role of parents by providing food, clothing, accommodation and caring for themselves and their orphaned siblings as no consistent State support exists for them. It means that the child head of the family must effectively raise their brothers and sisters and forgo the opportunity, through education, of wrenching themselves out of the poverty trap.

There are at least 2,500orphans and 1,000 child-headed families that have been identified in the 50 square mile radius surrounding the Holy Cross Hospice. Our primary concern is to try to help meet their basic needs. We want to help give them a chance to be children. These children are not merely statistics, they are human beings suffering terrible psychological effects from the loss of their parents. They are hungry, poverty stricken, frightened and lonely.

Popularity: 45% [?]

The Holy Cross Hospice is situated in Emoyeni, KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, some 120 kilometres north of Durban and is run by Sister Priscilla Dlamini. The Holy Cross Hospice is, however, not merely a hospice. It consists of a “complex” that incorporates a community clinic, 40 bed hospice, crèche, training centre and a medicinal herb garden and dispensary and has a total staff complement of 50 people.

The Holy Cross Hospice is adjacent to a Roman Catholic church, a State funded primary and secondary school and a convent.
Sister Priscilla runs the many programmes she has developed from the Holy Cross Hospice. She was appointed to the post in 2000 by the Bishop of Eshowe, Bishop Biyase, to help this desperately impoverished and AIDS ravaged community. The affairs of the Holy Cross Hospice are governed by an independent Board of Trustees drawn from leaders in the local community.

The clinic provides basic medical facilities for the local community. It is staffed by Sister Priscilla, a trained nurse and volunteers. It is partly funded by the government and it deals with basic care, diagnoses and referrals to either the nearest hospital, doctor or, in more tragic cases, to the hospice on the complex.

From funds raised by Sister and help from various sources, Sister converted stables on the premises in to a 40 bed hospice in 2002. Since then, the hospice has provided dignified care for hundreds of terminally ill men, women and children.

Until 2004, the crèche consisted of a converted shed that could house no more than 24 children in cramped conditions. In August 2004, a new crèche, which was funded by other donors, was opened. This new facility – The Bishop Mansuet Biyase Crèche – can take some 150 children. Most of these children are orphans.

Through an innovative Home Based Care programme, the Holy Cross Hospice currently provides support – ranging from the provision of food, clothing and medicine to bereavement counselling, palliative care and acting as surrogate parents – for many AIDS sufferers and sick people and 2,500 orphans and 1,000 child headed families. The programme is currently staffed by 23 caregivers, specifically trained by Sister Priscilla at the training centre to carry out this role, and a number of trainee caregivers.

Sister Priscilla has had some considerable success in administering natural herbal remedies to her HIV infected patients providing both symptomatic relief and slowing down the onset of some of the terrible and painful side effects by boosting the immune system. To further this, Sister has established an herbal garden and dispensary on the Holy Cross Hospice premises to further this project. BBC2 screened a documentary on Alternative Medicines in 2006 which featured Sister’s work in this field.

Significantly, when Sister Priscilla arrived at the Holy Cross Hospice the only operative facility was the clinic. The hospice, crèche and training centre and the many programmes that are now run at the Holy Cross Hospice were developed by Sister Priscilla. She had the dream and the drive to help this impoverished community.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Small charity, big impact

The founders of the Trust became aware of Sister Priscilla and her programmes in 2002 following a period of research in to similar projects. The Charity was formed in November 2002 and registered with the Charities Commissioner of England and Wales in January 2003.

The aim at the outset was to provide funding for specific, targeted projects where we could make a real difference and where we could “get our arms around” the projects we supported. Funds would thus be raised by periodic events and from friends, colleagues and organisations interested in helping the plight of these children.

Since inception in November 2002, the Trust has funded the following programmes and projects:

• Caregivers’ monthly allowances; the Caregivers are central to the success of the Home Based Care Programme which is the most important programme that Sister Priscilla runs. In 2003, there were 13 Caregivers, there are now 23
• Food parcels, primarily for children in the more remote rural areas in the region
• Clothing, shoes and toys for the children; mainly collected from schools in the UK
• Stationery and equipment for the crèche
• Remedial teacher and support staff for the crèche
• A second hand car for the Holy Cross Hospice staff
• A 1.3 ton truck with cab; this is used to transport children to and from the crèche.

At the outset in November 2002, Sister Priscilla was providing care to some 600 orphans in the area –there are now 2,500.

Popularity: 63% [?]

The Problem

In rural South Africa, whole generations of parents have been wiped out by AIDS or from diseases such as tuberculosis that HIV positive people are likely to contract before the onset of full blown AIDS. It means that the children that remain must take on the role of parents; providing food, clothing, accommodation and care for themselves and their orphaned siblings as the State support systems that do exist for these children are inadequate in rural South Africa.

To deal with this problem, there is the need for support systems that are fostered and operated by the community but which can, in time, be integrated with those provided by the State. Clearly this would be the ideal outcome.

The chain of problems associated with AIDS orphans and the child-headed family phenomenon in rural South Africa, are as follows:

• there is little infrastructure; roads are treacherous, virtually no public transport exists and “the dwellings” are spread over a large area.
• the living conditions are, at best, rudimentary: the children live in basic mud huts with limited or no insulation in a climate where summers are stiflingly hot and the winters freezing. There is no electricity or running water and sanitation is primitive.
• the normally close knit Zulu community has been fragmented, with the elders dying off prematurely from AIDS and HIV related illnesses; this has had a devastating effect on the normally highly supportive Zulu community culture which is built on a foundation of mutual support.

In so far as the children themselves are concerned, the problems are:

• the children have largely been left to fend for themselves with no income nor a source of food. Until the children have been identified and processed to receive any aid from the State, there is limited or no support available.
• if the food shortage problem is solved there arises the next immediate problem: these children cannot cook, let alone ration for a family until the next batch of food arrives.
• the orphans become responsible for basic home care, including nursing sick siblings and dealing with day-to-day medical attention whilst facing up to the fear and reality of AIDS.

If we imagine these skills can be taught and the demand for food met, these children face further problems:

• How will they understand the dangers of the society in which they live?
• What is preventing them from ignorantly falling into the common trap of sexually transmitted AIDS infection?
• How will they be educated in a rural environment with little or no public transport and no money for school uniforms, which are a pre-requisite for children to be enrolled in the local State schools?
• Finally, arguably most importantly, how will these children be able to deal with the emotional turmoil and mental scars that are bound to be inflicted?

A Solution

Sister Priscilla has set up a system in her surrounding area that attempts to tackle these problems, employing the help of the local community and creating, where possible, sustainable development programmes.

The Home Based Care programme reaches out, through Caregivers, to the most disadvantaged in the community and through this to the orphaned or sick children and child headed families that are both within range or too far away to walk to the Holy Cross Hospice. The Caregivers are trained in first aid, child and bereavement counselling, primary healthcare and the treatment of many of the symptoms of AIDS. While supplying the food and these support services, Caregivers effectively act as surrogate parents to the orphans.

The Caregivers are pivotal to the success of the Home Based Care programme. Besides their intensive training, the fact that they are drawn from the community lends weight to the probability of success of the programme. Trust is fostered through the Caregivers and community committees and through the process of delivering food and providing teaching and emotional support.

Initially, most of the Caregivers were based in and around the Holy Cross AIDS Hospice and could only realistically visit the outlying areas, at best, on a twice weekly basis. Identification of those most in need is the critical first step to providing care and this was greatly hindered by the lack of coverage. As a solution, Sister Priscilla set up four satellite outposts in the far outlying, mountainous areas surrounding the Holy Cross Hospice. These outposts are staffed by fully trained, locally based Caregivers who are provided with the resources to do their job effectively.

The satellites are managed by The Holy Cross AIDS Hospice but are directly responsible for their respective areas. Each satellite consists of a small pre-fabricated building, supplied by the Homeplan Foundation, from which the fully trained, local Caregivers administer to their own local community. In addition, feeding schemes for the children in the surrounding area are run from these satellites and are utilised as a rudimentary crèche.

With these outposts in place, the care net is being spread and tightened, allowing first the identification of the orphans and child-headed families followed by care, thereby creating uniformity throughout the region covered by the Holy Cross AIDS Hospice. By having a recognised and trusted member of the community supplying and co-ordinating the care effort, the ‘fear’ factor of separation from the family unit is eliminated, which in turn promotes a willingness to seek support.

Popularity: 56% [?]

The primary role of the Caregivers is to reach out to the community in the 50 square kilometre area surrounding The Holy Cross Hospice and provide care and support to the most needy on a structured and consistent basis. During the year ended December 2009, the Caregivers made over 5,500 visits to individual households in this community.

The activities carried out by the Caregivers when they are specifically providing support to the orphans and child headed families are as follows:

• Weekly visits to the homes of the children where there are orphans or vulnerable children in which the children are either being fostered by a member of the community or where there is a child headed family.
• Distribution of food parcels each month.
• Arranging for houses to be built for the child headed families whose parents have died and left them without any shelter or placing, where possible, orphans with foster homes in their community.
• Supplying children with clothing, blankets and any basic needs.
• Attending to the medical needs of the children; this can encompass the distribution of medication, referrals to doctors, clinics or hospitals or, in the extreme cases to the hospice.
• Counselling those children that are HIV positive.
• Counselling the children who have, or are about to lose their parents.
• Providing advice and counsel on the dangers of AIDS.
• Preparing “memory boxes” for each orphan and child headed family, thereby keeping mementos and family documents in safe keeping; the former to maintain a link to their family and the latter being critical to ultimately provide proof that they are orphans and hopefully qualify for State support.
• Helping orphaned children get their birth certificates and the death certificates of their parents; this is necessary to enable children to apply for State grants. The Caregivers arrange for the orphaned children to be screened and referred to Department of Social Welfare so that they can obtain the grants.
• Ensuring that the children who are the head of the families go to school and remain there; some older children refuse to go back to school as they feel that they are “adults” having played the adult role for so long.
• Writing letters to school headmasters to have them admit the orphans in to their schools; not all orphans are accepted for free as schools have budgetary constraints and are invariably reluctant or unable to accommodate non-fee paying children.
• Supplying, where possible, the orphans with uniforms and stationery and paying their school fees or negotiating with the authorities to have the fees waived.
• Identifying children that are at risk of losing their parents, foster parents or child head of the family; mostly through sickness in order to ensure that care can be put in place when the need arrives.

In essence, the Caregivers are “surrogate parents” for these children.

Sister Pricilla has trained over 150 Caregivers over the last few years and, until the end of 2002, they received no pay. As a consequence, only a small number were able to afford to work in the Home Based Care Programme and those that did, could only do so for a few days a week. To truly give these children a start in life, the number of Caregivers and days worked had to increase.

In February 2003, the Trust began to provide the Caregivers with a monthly allowance of R650 (£50). This has resulted in each Caregiver being able to work full time, dramatically improving the emotional and physical state of the children. At that time, there were 13 part-time Caregivers; there are currently 23 full-time Caregivers that receive an allowance from the Trust. Significantly, the Caregivers now reach out to 2,500 orphans in comparison with 600 in 2002.

The Caregivers receive training from Sister Priscilla and from outside agencies covering many aspects such as primary health care, AIDS treatment, child and bereavement counselling, personal growth, rape crisis, yoga, palliative care, AIDS awareness and prevention and Natural Family Planning.

The performance of the Caregivers and progress of each orphan and child headed family is monitored carefully. Caregivers meet every Monday at the Holy Cross Hospice to receive on-going training, share experiences and provide their written reports and statistics. Statistics are maintained for each visit, for each child and for each child headed family and are used to help provide targeted and effective care. These statistics are also provided to Regional Hospice Care Associations, The Global Fund, State institutions and to the Trust. During the year ended December 2008, the Caregivers made some 5,500 household visits. The Home Based Care Programme remains one of the biggest projects of its kind in KwaZulu-Natal.

This year, the Trust initiated a database project together with Xchanging PLC, a UK listed company. The aim is to help Sister and her team streamline her back office operations and are in the process of devising a reporting system that will be used to help her more effectively target the home based care programmes and compile statistics for external health care bodies.

Popularity: 63% [?]

When Sister Priscilla arrived at The Holy Cross mission, she recognized that there was a need for a crèche or Day Care centre for pre-school children. This need arose from the prevalence of the child headed families and the reluctance of the “head of the family” to leave their younger siblings while they attended school. The need also arose to allow the children to play, be children and thus escape from the predicament they face as orphans and members of a child headed family.

To deal with the immediate needs and cater for the pre-school brothers and sisters of the child headed families attending the nearby primary/secondary school, Sister Priscilla converted a shed in to a rudimentary pre-school Day Care centre which could house up to 24 children. As the number of orphans and child headed families continued to grow and the reach of the Home Based Care Programme increase, so did the need for a larger facility.

From funds received from other donors, Sister Priscilla was able to fulfil a dream by constructing a crèche that is able to cater for some 150 pre-school children. The crèche – The Bishop Mansuet Biyase Crèche – was opened in August 2004. The crèche has 4 classrooms, a central service area and is fully equipped with a playground adjacent. The children receive 3 meals a day at the crèche thereby improving their health significantly. Currently, the crèche has 120 children and is staffed by a team of seven.

One of the challenges is to provide transport for the children in this deeply rural area where there is no public transport and the very young children would otherwise need to walk long distances to attend the crèche. Initially, a 1.3 ton truck that was purchased by the Trust was utilised to transport building materials to erect houses for the children in conjunction with a programme with Homeplan, a Holland based charity (See “Housing”). It is now utilised full-time to ferry children to and from the crèche. Each schoolday, more than 100 children are collected from 4 collection points and taken to the crèche and then returned to tto the collection points at the end of the day. Currently, another donor has made funds available for the wages of the driver.

The Trust has also provided stationery, toys and equipment for the crèche and currently funds the salary of a remedial teacher and cook/cleaner.

Popularity: 53% [?]

In 2003, the Trust canvassed six schools* in the UK to “adopt” the Holy Cross Hospice and Sister Priscilla’s programmes. Over a three month period, some 6 tons of clothing, shoes, educational aids, toys and stationery were collected and packaged and, in July of 2003, a fully loaded 40ft container was shipped from the UK to the Holy Cross Hospice.

Unfortunately, on arrival in Durban the container was impounded by the SA Customs authorities on the grounds were that, although all items other than the clothing could gain entry duty free as they were being imported by a registered charity, the clothing could not. The import of second hand clothing was prohibited, even by registered charities, following a change in legislation aimed at protecting the South African textile and clothing industry. The only possible grounds for entry were if the clothing was necessary to meet the needs of a national disaster.

Representations were made to local, provincial and State authorities to have the container fully released and although all items other than the clothing could be cleared, it was felt that this would be impractical and costly as the clothing represented the vast majority of the goods in the container. Months went by and demurrage charges began to mount. Ultimately, direct representation was made to Graca Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela, and to the State President, Thabo Mbeki.

After 18 months of representations and meetings, the container was cleared duty free and all demurrage was waived. The clearing agent, who had represented us pro bono throughout the saga, also delivered the container to the Holy Cross Hospice free of charge.

The container finally reached its destination in January 2005. Sister Priscilla arranged for a large portion of the goods to be distributed on the day of arrival of the container and the week that followed. This was fortuitous as it coincided with the imminent commencement of the school year and the children were desperate for clothing. Some of the Trustees and their families had travelled to South Africa and were able to help unload and distribute the clothes on the day. The occasion was a moving and heart warming experience and the local press covered the saga fully.

The toys and educational equipment in the crèche and the remainder of the clothing and shoes are being distributed over time given the vast quantity collected. This year some of the new intake of children at the crèche are being kitted with clothes from the container that left the UK some 5 years ago!

Our thanks go out to the pupils, parents and teachers of Papplewick , Lambrook Haileybury, Worth School, The Marist School Ascot, St John’s Beaumont and St Mary’s Ascot.

Popularity: 57% [?]

One of the most pressing but basic needs for the children is housing. This is need has been recognised by the State but in the rural areas of South Africa – and particularly in the area covered by the Holy Cross Hospice – the shortage of even rudimentary housing is chronic. Sister Priscilla also recognised the acute need for housing for the most disadvantaged and, in particular, for the child headed families.

In 2004, the Holy Cross Hospice commenced a project with a Holland based donor, The Homeplan Foundation, to provide pre-fabricated houses for child headed families. The ultimate aim is to build 200 houses by 2009. The progress of the project, however, was suffering from a lack of transport to ferry the building materials out to the sites in the surrounding, deeply rural areas.

In consultation with Homeplan and Sister Priscilla, the Trust decided to address this issue by providing, in September 2005, a 1.3 ton truck. By the end of 2009, 144 houses had been erected to house some 500 children.

Popularity: 52% [?]

When Sister Priscilla arrived at the Holy Cross mission in 2000, the immediate and pressing need was for the provision of a hospice. The spread of AIDS was rising and the death toll in the region was mounting. At that time, Sister was fortunate that two German doctors had joined her at the Mission in 2001 to study the effects of AIDS and to assist her in the clinic.

Together with the doctors, Sister Priscilla raised the necessary funds and went about converting the derelict stables on the Mission in to a 40 bed hospice. When it was completed in 2002, the hospice could cater for couples, individual patients, children and infants thereby providing a sanctuary for the terminally ill members of the community and a place where they could die with dignity. There are no other similar facilities in the area.

The hospice is staffed by a trained nurse and periodically by Caregivers.

Popularity: 50% [?]