Volunteer Development Officer Needed

Project HOPE has an immediate need for a volunteer development officer for our office in South Africa. Learn More Now

Project HOPE Assessing Needs in South Africa

Over the past few weeks, with the help of a couple of interns, Project HOPE has been very busy conducting rapid needs assessments in a number of slums in and around the West Rand area.

We put together a survey to ask some specific questions about access to health facilities, water, sanitation, food, education and economic status and then went with someone from the local government into the slum area to begin conducting the survey.

The first thing to do is to count the number of shacks – as these slums are “informal” there are no statistics on them, no one even knows exactly how many people live in them! So we walk up and down the rows of shacks counting them. This gives us an estimate of how many people are living there. With that number we can work out how many people we need to survey to get an accurate sample of the population. After that, it's going randomly throughout the slum interviewing people and getting the information that we need.

It has been very interesting because it provides the opportunity not only to get information, but strike up conversations with people and let them tell you what the problems are and what they feel the solutions are. We have been having municipal strikes recently which has meant that a couple of these slums have not received any water. The government uses a tractor to pull a tank of water a couple of times a week into these areas. No water means limited cooking, washing and having to walk a distance to buy little bits of water from a shop when desperate.

In all of these slums that I have visited, little food is grown, which means that people have to buy everything that they eat. With soaring food prices the amount and quality of food that people are buying is being reduced. I like to dig a bit deeper with questions about food asking where they get their food from, and what they eat each day. A few people I interviewed were very honest. Their response was, “We don’t have money to buy food, so we steal it from the local farmer.”

Walking around these areas you can see the intergenerational transmission of poverty very clearly. The mom who had a child at a young age is illiterate. Her child went to primary school but had to stop because she was “naughty” which means she got pregnant. Her child faces so many barriers to overcome and break free from this cycle.

Project HOPE is right now designing a specific program to address the needs of children under the age of 5 years to help break them from this cycle of poverty and help give them a brighter future where access to quality health care, education, basic services, employment opportunities and food will not be a dream, but a reality.

Now Recruiting Volunteers

Project HOPE is recruiting volunteers for a land-based mission in South Africa from October 10-26, 2009. This pilot volunteer program will focus on chronic disease assessment in two urban slums in the vicinity of Johannesburg. Learn More

Hello From the Project HOPE Staff in Africa

Project HOPE group photo from the Africa

“Fall Leadership Conference” held in Namibia in June.

Moving Forward...

I’ve just come back from a trip to Namibia where Project HOPE held its Africa “Fall Leadership Conference.” Colleagues from Mozambique, Malawi, and Namibia plus me representing South Africa all met in Windhoek with our Senior Vice President, Monitoring & Evaluation Director, and Technical Backstop from the U.S. to spend a week strategising how we want to move forward here in our respective countries as well as learning new Monitoring & Evaluation techniques, program design tools and operations research methodology.


It was really nice to catch up with friends and learn more about what is going on in other countries close by. I love strategising! It gives you an opportunity to dream big, but also realistically put a time frame together of what we want to do. I hope to share this strategy with you in full as soon as it is finalised. However, I can tell you that we are entering a very exciting time here in South Africa. We believe we have found a niche for ourselves targeting the health of people who live in slums on the outskirts of cities such as Johannesburg. These people face a double burden of disease – high prevalence of infectious diseases like HIV and TB as well as an emerging problem of chronic diseases arising from lifestyle behaviours such as alcoholism, smoking, poor diet.


One of the things that became quite clear at the FLC was the fact that the current economic crisis is affecting the charity sector in quite a big way. We knew that it would; when ‘purse strings’ are tight a lot of the time charitable giving is the first to take the hit. It hasn’t just affected Project HOPE, but is affecting most charities big and small. Here in South Africa we are seeing many smaller NGOs simply close down because funding has dried up, others are barely functioning. This economic crisis is also affecting charities in the sense that government charitable giving is also taking a hit. We know for example that PEPFAR II when it comes out will most likely be a smaller pot of money. There are a few NGOs here in South Africa that get their money directly from the South African government and they haven’t received it for a few months. What does this all mean?

Well I think there are both positive and negative impacts. On the positive side (my opinion!), the crisis is forcing the charity sector to re-evaluate itself. We spent a lot of time at FLC discussing who we want to be known for – our branding in Africa, highlighting our technical capacities in certain areas. This is a good thing. It’s also forcing charities to be more creative, open and transparent about how they obtain and use funds. Knowing that the potential pot of money is smaller, makes competition fiercer between charities to win grants. This can be positive too. It means that charities will have to put in more effort to design quality programs that have real impacts. It will also force partnerships between charities with specialised capacities which is good. It also means that what in the past might have been a safe bet in terms of winning a specific grant is no longer the case, forcing charities to rethink and design new and innovative approaches to targeting poverty reduction and health issues in the third world.

As for the negative impacts – there are now 1 billion people that go hungry each day, up from 800 million. Government expenditure is being cut across the world, in vital sectors such as health and education. Who does this usually affect the most – the poor and underprivileged. A smaller pot of money for the charity sector ultimately might mean reducing the number of beneficiaries that we reach.

Here in South Africa we are busy moving forward implementing our new strategic direction. Our VSF program is teaching us many things about reaching people in slums, we are busy making contacts with other NGOs, and are currently in the process of writing a couple of grant applications targeting OVC in the slums. If you have any comments please feel free to contact me. Until the next time!

Can You Help Project HOPE Today?

Project HOPE is funded from the grassroots by caring people like you. Our financial year is ending on June 30th and we need your help to continue providing lifesaving health education and humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world, especially children. You’ve been following our important work online and know about our lifesaving programs around the globe as well as our inspiring new program in South Africa. Can you help today. Donating online is the fastest and most efficient way to help Project HOPE continue saving lives. Donate now.

Countering the “Hand-Out” Mentality in Munsieville

Both the formal and informal settlements of Munsieville have been around a long time. Over the years there have been numerous NGOs both small and large that have come in, run a program and then left – both in good and bad circumstances. Right now as I write this sitting in the container office, there is a small NGO handing out food packages to vulnerable women and children. Other NGOs give out clothes, food, soap sporadically depending on when they receive donations in.

This is valuable and needed, people need to eat, and need clothes to wear, yet this has created over the years a “Hand-Out” mentality or “dependency syndrome” in which people expect to get. So there is this difficult tension between trying to meet immediate needs, and looking longer-term at trying to address root causes of the problems. The government has acknowledged this problem, it wants organisations to empower people to dig themselves out of poverty. We (NGOs and government) can give people the tools, but they must do it for themselves.

An example of this would be Project HOPE's Village Savings Fund. This is a program in which groups of 20 are formed, and trained to collect savings on a weekly basis – even if it is only 10 cents - and put it into a pot. From this pot loans can be made out to the group to start a business, expand an existing venture. These loans are paid back with interest thus increasing the savings pot. They also supplement this with a Social Fund which acts as a form of insurance. Each member puts the same amount into the Social Fund each week until it has reached the designated pot size. From this fund emergencies can be met like paying to get to the hospital, funeral expenses etc.

A key component of each meeting is health education – talking about relevant issues such as HIV, TB, legal access to government services.

The concept of the Village Savings Fund is a great one, and it has worked well in many other places in Africa, and also here in South Africa. We are taking it to the people and hitting the dependency syndrome right on the head with it. Its not an over night process trying to get people to see that they can better their lives for themselves, it takes a lot of time and a lot of convincing. But we are sure that once the first group of Village Savings Fund participants have gone through the cycle and they can see the tangible benefits, then they will become advocates for it and recruit others.