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Thandanani Childrens Foundation: Campaign for "Your Right"
Karren Y Hodgkins. 15 March 2004. Thandanani Childrens Foundation.
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Thandanani Childrens Foundation is a strong advocate for children?’s rights and has a full time Advocacy Officer. The current campaign, "YOUR RIGHT" encourages caretakers and young people to make the effort to obtain birth certificates and identity documents. Throughout the campaign we will be outlining how to go about obtaining these important documents and explaining the impact on one?’s life of not having these documents available. We are working in close cooperation with The Department of Home Affairs.
The key sponsor for this campaign is the French Government, who has been supportive of Thandanani?’s work in the community. (In September 2003 the organisation was nominated to be decorated with the Legion of Honour and met with President Jacques Chirac at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.) The communities surrounding Pietermaritzburg are the primary targets for the current campaign, but in particular the children that are on the organisation?’s database (the Orphans and Vulnerable Children) that do not have these documents.
To those of us who have these documents in place from the beginning, it is impossible to try and explain the impact on one?’s life of not having them. The children that Thandanani deals with are already vulnerable, without these documents its easy to understand how they may feel invisible!
Yet is not uncommon for many of the children within the communities to be without them. Home births, poverty, HIV/AIDS are just some of the contributing factors. These children are victims of circumstance and while we want to help them, without these basic documents, the job becomes so much harder.
Relatives may want to assist, but need the grant to support the child. For that, a birth certificate or ID is required. We all understand that education is a building block of the economy, but without the birth certificate or ID document, these children can?’t get into the starting stalls.
A birth certificate is required to:
- apply for social grants, eg: child support grant, care dependency grant or foster grant
- access the education system
- access an identity document
- prove you are a South African citizen
An identity document is required for you to be able to:
- apply for social grants, eg: child support grant, foster grant, disability grant or old age grant
- register for matric exams
- apply for a job
- get a drivers licence
- vote during elections
- prove that you are a South African citizen
To create awareness, Thandanani will target children already in one of our programmes. These will include caregivers and parents of children, our volunteers and their children, children in Early Learning Centres, Child headed Households as well as their surrounding communities.
Thandanani is adopting a multipronged approach to our communication. The educational materials have been produced in Zulu. These are STEP-BY-STEP GUIDES to obtaining a birth certificate and an identification document. The brochures and posters are designed to facilitate understanding. The style is pictoral strips of a conversation taking place between two people. Samples of the forms required from the Department of Home Affairs are illustrated. Maps showing the location of Thandanani and the Department of Home Affairs (Pietermaritzburg) are also included. . We have produced 10 000 full colour brochures and 300 full colour posters.
This initiative has required consultation with stakeholders within the community and we have included a list of the scheduled educational workshops we are holding within the communities at the end of the document. Meetings will take place at venues such as, clinics, sports centres, school halls and community centres. Staff from Thandanani, together with the community volunteers (4Cs) will lead these workshops to raise the level of awareness and encourage them to take action.
We need your help too! We are looking for extensive media cover to try and extend the reach of this campaign as far as we can. Learn with Echo (a supplement to The Witness and Echo) has already joined us in our effort but any additional cover will help us to achieve our goal.
Please contact Emma Mortimer at Thandanani Childrens Foundation on 033 345 1879 or [email protected] or myself, Karren Hodgkins, marketing consultant to Thandanani on 033 3450319 or [email protected] for any additional information you require or copies of the material (The copy is available in electronic format in English or Zulu). We would appreciate any support.
Timing: The YOUR RIGHT campaign will run from March to December 2004.
Measurables: Thandanani is looking to document the process and the results achieved by this campaign.
Introduction/ Background to Thandanani Childrens Foundation: Thandanani Childrens Foundation is a registered NPO, number 006-136 NPO, and a registered Section21 Company, No.2002005186/08. Thandanani is accredited as a Training Provider with the Health and Welfare SETA, Accreditation Number HW592PA0300018. Thandanani Childrens Foundation began in 1989 as a response to the atrociously high numbers of babies being abandoned at Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg. Thandanani found volunteers to work with more than 70 abandoned children. While caring for these children, Thandanani looked for a solution to the problem. By 1995 Thandanani had been effective in restoring children to their communities and the number of children abandoned at the hospital had dropped considerably. Since then, Thandanani has grown and improved, as it aims to bring hope to the lives of children and create a safe and nurturing environment within their communities of origin. It now provides a number of interventions to aid Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children by working through eleven communities. Thandanani enables the community to respond to the needs of Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children by setting up Community Child Care Committees (4Cs). The 4Cs are made up of 85 volunteers, mainly unemployed women, from the communities. They are trained to identify the Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children and then help ensure that their needs for food, shelter, education as well as physical and emotional love and support are met. For more information visit our website: www.thandanani.org.za
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