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Feature Stories
Moyeni Social Care Centre
Siteki, Swaziland — Four-year-old Zandile, like many other children in Swaziland, lost her father, and her mother makes a living from working as a casual domestic laborer in Siteki, a small town in the Southeastern part of Swaziland. Zandile attends the Moyeni Social Care Centre in Siteki. "My name is Zandile. I go to Moyeni Social Care Centre for pre-school. I enjoy learning how to read and write," she says.
The Moyeni Social Care Centre—popularly known as Kuguga Kuyeta Nakuwe—is a beacon of hope in this AIDS-affected community, where most live in abject poverty. Moyeni provides services such as education, early childhood care and support, and nutrition to a community that previously did not have such support.
Moyeni reaches more than 170 children and their care givers with a range of integrated services. The Centre also connects them to other agencies such as UNICEF for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services, the Global Church for education, and most importantly Good Shepherd hospital for primary care and HIV and AIDS-related services such as home-based care and antiretroviral medicines (ARVs).
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| Elliott Matsenjwa and Valencia Nkambule cofounded the Moyeni Social Care Center with support from the Moyeni community. |
Moyeni is a community-based organization that evolved from a National Care Point (NCP). Under the leadership of two retired community members, Elliott Matsenjwa and Valencia Nkambule, the Moyeni community founded this unique initiative. Asked about the exact date when Moyeni was launched, Elliott and Valencia concur that, "The idea struck us in the year 2000, when we relocated back to their community only to find a lot of our friends and neighbors dying or sick because of AIDS." Elliott and Valencia felt challenged by the situation, particularly the inability of Moyeni residents on tuberculosis (TB) treatment to find food to sustain their dietary needs at a critical time in their treatment cycle. In 2003, Moyeni introduced a supplementary feeding program which benefited 450 HIV-affected adults and vulnerable children with support from AMICAL Swaziland.
Valencia and Elliott were both personally affected by AIDS. Valencia cares for eight orphans left behind by her three brothers and three sisters, and looks after her sister who is on ARV treatment. Elliott takes care of his mother, who was infected with HIV while caring for his sister when she was dying from the disease. In the community, Elliott and Valencia are well known for their support to those in need.
The Bantwana Initiative is providing Moyeni with support and resources to enable them to better provide comprehensive, holistic services for orphans and care givers, including psychosocial support and education. "Through Bantwana we have had a rare opportunity to develop counseling and psychosocial support skills," says Elliott. "Education services offered by Moyeni are now better as we have teaching aids, a proper place to conduct pre-school classes, sanitary facilities for those who attend Moyeni Centre, and above all we have improved our self reliance through a vegetable garden supported by the Bantwana Initiative." Bantwana is also facilitating a mentoring service for Moyeni pre-school teachers to enable them to develop better skills to teach the more than 120 vulnerable children who attend day classes there.
In addition to direct services to roughly 170 orphans, vulnerable children, and care givers, according to Elliott, the other significant benefit from the partnership with Bantwana is the capacity building and confidence building support for their organization. Elliott summarizes the outcomes of the partnership with Bantwana by noting that, "We were not registered as an organization, nor did we have proper management training and skills—we now have all that."
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| The garden at the Moyeni Social Care Center is strengthening nutrition and skills by growing fresh vegetables the children can eat. |
As with all Bantwana Initiative partners, Moyeni's key strength is their ability to leverage local resources. Moyeni has had successful collaborative partnerships and service linkages with Good Shepherd Hospital, the Ministry of Education, Siteki Industrial Training, Siteki Town Council, and U.S. Peace Corps volunteers living in Swaziland among others. For Moyeni, any kind of help is great help to them as they struggle to sustain the needs of OVC and care givers who attend their centre.
What difference has Bantwana support made to Moyeni? Elliott is upbeat about Bantwana's partnership: "Bantwana is for those who are on-the-ground working with grassroots communities, and who are still growing. Since the year 2000, we knocked on many donor agencies' doors but they all indicated that they would not fund us as we were too nascent. We were sad that despite so many programs coming to fund the OVC and HIV and AIDS sector in Swaziland, no visible impact or resources were seen in our communities."
What has sustained Moyeni over the years unlike several other community initiatives that fizzle a few years after their launch? Valencia says that "We work like a family, towards one common goal. The strong spirit of voluntarism within the community has even surpassed my expectations. We have people volunteering every day to support activities at Moyeni centre."
With Bantwana's support, Moyeni's vision is to strengthen their self sustainability by developing more income-generating activities for the organization. They also want to have their pre-school service formally endorsed by the Ministry of Education to enable OVC to enroll in mainstream primary school after they graduate. They also want to develop a strong early childhood service and outreach team that covers a wider geographic area. In Valencia's words, they want "to see to it that our children grow up just like any other child—with access to integrated care and support from the entire community."