New Blogger Address for Project HOPE in South Africa

Stefan Lawson is currently serving as both Project HOPE's Country Director for South Africa and Interim Country Director for Mozambique. You can follow his his experiences in both countries at the new blogger address Project HOPE in Africa.

Thanks for reading!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Project HOPE South Africa

2009 has been a successful year for Project HOPE in South Africa. Our Village Saving Fund (VSF) program closed out successfully benefiting almost 300 orphans and vulnerable children(OVC) in the process and helping many caregivers overcome problems that they were facing.


An example of this is a thank you letter that Project HOPE received from one of the participants:

“My name is Dipuo Schalkwyk. I am 50 years old. I stay with my two daughters and 2 grandchildren. I joined the VSF group in May 2009. When I joined, life was very tough because there was no one working at home. I used to go to the Catholic Church every morning to get some food. Some of the days I used to come back home empty handed because there was no food. I tried to apply for the government grant and they told me to wait until I’m 60 years. My daughters have been trying to look for jobs for many years and till today they are still at home. My two grandchildren do get their child support grant but it is not enough. This money is supposed to take the kids to the crèche and feed them. Because there was no income in the house, we used to buy food with it and the children did not go to school. I was hesitating to join the VSF because I didn’t know what it was and how it could help me. Project HOPE staff asked me to give it a try and see the result after six months. Two months after I joined, I borrowed R200.00 and we bought twenty litres of paraffin. My daughters sold that paraffin in a week and it was finished. We bought a further 20 litres for four weeks and the response was positive, we decided to borrow R600.00 to add to what we had and we bought 100l of paraffin. Today I am not depending on someone to give me handouts. I don’t waste my time by going to church and wait for something that I am not sure whether I will get it or not. Since joining the VSF a number of positive changes have occurred: 1) My health has improved and my BP is down to normal again - my secret is eating healthy and not stressing anymore. 2) We eat vegetables every day and meat at least twice a week. 3) For the first time I have a savings account. 4) I am part of the Project HOPE food gardening program where I have been given land and seeds and am growing a variety of fruits and vegetables.”

The Social Fund, which is a form of group insurance used by members of the group in times of emergencies was recently used to allow a participant to travel back home to attend the funeral of his father and see his family for the first time in 18 years! He is one of our male participants in our men’s VSF group:

“I was born in North West Province. When I came here (West Rand), I worked for the mines. When the mines retrenched us, I did not go back home because I was hoping to find another job. Unfortunately it did not happen like that. I am staying alone in a one room shack. The last time I saw my family it was 18 years ago. I did not have money to go there. I joined this Village Savings Fund in May. I did not know what it was. At first I thought it was a woman thing. After I attended a few meetings and got some training, I began to understand it. I started to save a little money every week. I am not working and my family is in North West Province. In September this year, somebody told me that my dad had passed away; I did not know how I was going to bury my dad. I told some of the men in my group about my problem, they told me that I qualified to be given money for the transport to go and bury my dad. I was so excited when I received this R200.00 to go home. Everybody was excited to see me after so many years. Thank you Project HOPE for making this possible.”

As you can hopefully see through these couple of testimonies, it doesn’t take much to make a huge difference in people’s lives here in South Africa.

Our team here, myself included, thanks you for your generous support of our program here, and wishes you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Support Project HOPE Programs Around the World

Food Gardening Update

It's been a while since I last wrote about our pilot food gardening project in Munsieville. To be honest, at the beginning I was a little bit apprehensive because I wasn’t sure if people would remain enthusiastic or if they would quickly loose interest after we handed it over to the community.


All my fears have been laid to rest! I am so proud of our group of women and men who took on this challenge. It's not just a gardening challenge, but it is also a direct challenge against the hand-out mentality that is rife in the community. These guys are a light to the rest of the community. When people grasp the right vision, it can create such a powerful movement that very quickly it begins to indirectly impact people outside the program looking in and seeing what’s going on.

We have created 23 gardens, plus the keyhole garden and all are doing really well. We planted potatoes, butternut, maize, carrots, beetroot, runner beans, tomatoes, water-melons and pumpkins. The rains have now arrived and with our terracing technique we have managed to prevent the top-soil from being washed away.

If everything goes to plan in a few months time people will harvest a bumper crop that will benefit them nutritionally and any excess will be sold off providing an extra bit of income as well. In the mean time Project HOPE will keep monitoring the progress making sure that no pests attack the crops and will continue to provide help when needed.

Support Project HOPE Programs Around the World

Project HOPE Volunteers work in the West Rand

I had the pleasure of co-hosting a Project HOPE volunteer team from the U.S. for two weeks with the help of my colleague Andee from our headquarters in Millwood, Virginia. The team (profiles in the previous blog) came to carry out a comprehensive survey in Zanzele which is an informal settlement in the West Rand. Their first task was coming up with a sampling methodology which involved google maps, and some dice to determine the random houses that they were going to sample.

Armed with clip boards, scales, blood pressure machines, tape measures and a translator, they spent the best part of two weeks walking up and down Zanzele surveying people. The survey was designed to give us a comprehensive insight into life in the settlement. It asked a variety of questions from demographics, socio-economic, to health and well being. At the moment we are in the process of analysing the results which will determine the type of work that we undertake in the future.

The West Rand government on hearing that we were going to have this team requested that they spend a day doing a facility assessment. Volunteers Brian and Michelle spent the day with the EMS department and learnt that there is only one functioning public ambulance for the area, and Eric and Torrey spent the day at Bekkersdarl clinic which houses a maternity unit and is where most people from Zanzele walk to get treatment. The team used their experience to provide the government with a list of recommendations to improve service delivery to the area.

We were also asked by the government to provide a two day training on Chronic Diseases to the Community Health Care Workers (CHWs) that the government pays. We trained around 30 supervisors, who supervise a further 150 CHWs. They have received basic training on HIV and AIDS, TB and STIs but never anything on chronic diseases as this has not been a priority in the past. We were able to train them on food and nutrition, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and mental health. For many of them it was the first time that they had heard anything on this, so it was very fulfilling for the team to teach them basic tips on how to prevent and identify the diseases. These CHWs will now go and share the information that they received with the people that they supervise and in turn this will begin to benefit the wider community when these CHWs do their weekly door-to-door visits.

Overall the volunteer team made a huge impact in the lives of many people in the West Rand and both Project HOPE and the West Rand Government are thankful to them for the time, energy and expertise that they brought to the field.

Learn more about their day to day work. Read our Project HOPE in the Field Blog.

Meet the Project HOPE Volunteers in South Africa

From October 10-26, four Project HOPE volunteers are participating in a pilot volunteer program focusing on chronic disease assessment in two urban slums in the vicinity of Johannesburg.

Dr. Brian Crawford, an emergency room doctor from Colorado Springs, Colorado has more than 20 years of experience. This is his third time volunteering for Project HOPE, previously serving in Indonesia immediately following the Tsunami in 2005 and earlier this year he joined HOPE volunteers in Ghana. He is working as and ER physician in South Africa.




Eric Dinally, from Brooklyn, New York, is a first-time volunteer for Project HOPE. Eric is currently employed at New York Presbyterian Hospital and is an active volunteer in his community. He is also working on his masters in nursing. He will be working as an RN in South Africa.


Torrey Flynn, a first-time Project HOPE volunteer, is a recent master of nursing and pediatric nurse practitioner program graduate from University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center. Torrey is working as a nurse practitioner in South Africa. She currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa.





Michelle Pena from San Francisco, has participated in two volunteer missions for Project HOPE, first serving in Latin America onboard the USNS Comfort in 2007 and again returning to Latin America onboard the USS Kearsarge in 2008. She is currently working on her Master in Public Health, Epidemiology and Master of Arts, Latin American Studies at San Diego State University. In South Africa, Michelle is working as a nurse educator.

Village Saving Fund Mentoring Day

Because of the way the community is structured in Munsieville, Village Saving Fund (VSF) groups generally tend not to interact with each other because they are based on language group – i.e. we have a couple of Mozambican groups, a couple of South African groups, a Zimbabwean group etc.

Whilst this makes it easier for us to manage and to teach health education to, the groups lose out on benefiting from learning from one another. Over the past few months we have seen some groups do extremely well and other groups struggle. Some groups have started small businesses selling chickens and baking cakes, whilst other have not.

Even though I have built up the trust of these groups over the past few months it’s still difficult for me as a white person to encourage them to do something “foreign” like starting a small business when all they are used to doing is waiting for the government or a local NGO to give them something. So after thinking about this for a while we decided to hold a mentoring day, where all the groups would get together and share with one another about what their group is doing, about the successes and the struggles that they have faced. This way the groups would learn from their counterparts in the community rather than listening to someone from the outside.

To spice this up a bit a few weeks ago we told each group that there would be a prize for the most successful group (based on weekly attendance, savings & loans portfolio, initiative taken to start up a business).

The day was a great success. The groups shared about what they have been doing – one group started by purchasing 10 chickens a week to sell, and now they are up to 25 a week. Other groups shared frustrations about the lack of unity between group members making it difficult for them to work together.

The highlight of the event was announcing who the winners were – a Mozambican group called “Sizanani” which means “helping each other.” They received certificates and a prize of food and clothing. The video below shows you how excited the room got when the winners were announced!

We are hoping now that this day provided the needed motivation to the groups that are struggling to get on the right track, and our team will be following up with house visits to encourage further the important difference that VSF can make on the health and lives of people living in slums here in South Africa.

Food Gardening & Vermiculture

As you read the title of this you might be asking, “What is verimculture?” Vermiculture or “vermicomposting” as it is sometimes known is using a specific type of worm called a “Red Wriggler” to break down materials such as vegetable peels, leftover fruit, bread etc into a black, nutrient rich compost that can be used to grow vegetables in, and regenerate soil. A by product of this is a liquid known as “worm tea” that is a concentrated organic fertiliser that you water down and can feed your vegetables with.

Poor nutrition impacts people particularly in a slum environment where there is not much space to grow anything, and where the soil has been eroded away. This means that people have to buy most of their food that they live on. With high unemployment in these places and inflation causing food prices to increase, many people are forced to buy cheaper food with little or no nutrient value to it. For children under the age of 5 years old this can have lifelong impacts as it can effect physical and cognitive development.

Through Project HOPE's Village Saving Fund(VSF) program we have been encouraging caregivers of young children to set up food gardens so that they can grow vegetables and fruit that will benefit their children. As planting season is almost upon us, last week we spent a couple of days clearing a piece of land that has been donated for us to use for gardening. As you can see from the pictures the place was a complete mess, full of trash, but we cleared it all and are in the process of preparing the land for planting.

As an experiment, we are preparing a keyhole garden, which has been designed to be placed in areas with little available space and can continuously grow a variety of crops. Using manure and vegetable peels, fruit, husks etc this garden will be able to grow enough food to support a small family. The picture to the right is the outline of one, and the second picture is of one that I did earlier to show you how productive it can be.

We are also going to experiment breeding worms, to decompose organic matter so that we can use the by-products to enrich the soil thus making it more productive. There will be the potential then to market and sell the compost and liquid fertiliser that is produced further benefiting the women in the VSF groups.

I will follow this post up in a few weeks time when we have planted our crops so you can see how the garden is progressing.

See how community farms are changing lives in other parts of Africa.