How best to help South Africa's children

Editorial by Andrew Cates, CEO of SOS Children UK

With the start of the 2010 World Cup Football in South Africa, much of the world's media is again focused on South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, but still a country with its own challenges and problems. At the edges of the World Cup we will see some glimpses of Africa's orphans, children and challenges and we hope that people will learn a little more about the work of charities there.

According to the CIA factbook, the population of South Africa is just over 49m, much the same as the UK but with twice as many children to care for and an average life expectancy of 49 rather than the 79 years we enjoy here. Children born in South Africa are ten times more likely to die in childhood than those born in the UK and the 5 million people with HIV/AIDS in South Africa is seventy times higher than here. The UK has no equivalent challenge to helping the 1.2 million AIDS orphans in South Africa: can you imagine if the UK had about a quarter as much money as we do now but a million orphaned children to care for on top of everything else? We would not be talking of children falling through the cracks so much as watching thousands of them sleeping on the street around us, and that is exactly what South Africans have to do. Not that they do not care, they do care and many of the South Africans who do have a job support our work financially. The fact that well over half of the costs of our programs there are raised locally is a testimony both to how much they value what we do and to their own caring nature.

The relatively high South Africa literacy rate of 84% constracts with the 24% of the workforce unemployed and looking for work. Overall, the economy is the strongest in Africa but still a quarter of the size of the UK. And although South Africa's children are in a better state than many in Africa, they are still very much in need of our help.

Helping Orphans in Rustenburg

So how do SOS Children help South Africa's children, especially with our focus on trying to give children a family based childhood? First, we run a total of eight children's villages, where in total around a thousand children with nowhere else to go can live in families with an SOS mother and new siblings. These are at Ennerdale, 30km south of Johannesburg, Mamelodi township near the capital Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Mthatha, Nelspruit, in the south eastern-most province of Mpumalanga and Rustenburg. As well as these new families for children with no-one, we run projects to help Aids Orphans in South Africa by supporting AIDs oprhans and children with terminally ill parents in their existing family homes and trying to improve their quality of life and chances of education. We also run nursery schools in South Africa and one primary school where we felt these would provide a critical help in the lifes of children, and run Street Children projects for South African Street children.

 

The Soccer World Cup has played a significant part in building our presence, with the children's village in Rustenburg funded by our role as official charity partner for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The English FA and Spurs football club both contributed family houses for Rustenburg village and each of the Spurs team sponsor a child there (including the ones in the current England club who are planning to visit).

In short, as elsewhere we have a widespread charity operation in South Africa trying to help "children with no-one" right across the country.

So, how can you help South Africa's children?

Well, the easiest thing to do is to set up a small monthly donation for South Africa (say £5 a month or £10 a month, please put "for South Africa" in the instructions box and we will spend 100% without UK deductions on our work there) to help us improve life for children in South Africa. If you would rather sponsor a child, at present we are appealing especially for child sponsors for Lesotho

which is an enclave of South Africa in particular need of help right now. Whichever way you give or sponsor you can be sure that SOS Children will be doing our very best to spend it in the most effective way to improve the lifes of children there.