WORKSHOP OR TALKING SHOP?

Now, here is the dilemma. King Solomon said, "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers, they succeed". On the other hand, on a morning like this, when the freezing winter winds are cutting through Munsieville's informal "shack" community, people are dying whilst the policy-makers, divided politicians and community strategists argue, posture and procrastinate.

Earlier this morning, along with a couple of Thoughtful Path Munsieville colleagues, I drove to a point near the shacks to collect a group of women for a meeting to thrash out plans to improve the safety of their shacks. I stopped not far from where yesterday I had met an old friend in the street, hobbling back to her ramshackle kiosk, obviously in serious discomfort. She told me how in May she had been shot by a young man who robbed her of the meagre takings of her micro-business. Now, she lived in constant fear.

Whilst waiting for the shack-dwelling women this morning, an emergency ambulance pitched up. A group shuffled towards it, led by one of the women due at the safety meeting. They bundled a man into the vehicle who had been stabbed repeatedly in the arm and face, in the middle of the night. I don't know if they tried to call for help at the time, but if they did, it would be unlikely to arrive until well into the daylight hours, as the emergency services regard it as a "no-go" area!

There on the windswept hillside where Munsieville is situated, we waited. Five minutes. Twenty-five minutes. Almost an hour. And slowly they arrived. As I waited, I thought long and hard about the plight of the families let down by talking people .... it pains me to say it, but they are predominantly men. I was shivering and trying to fend of a head cold, but soon forgot my woes as I thought of the dangers outlined in my previous blog - fire, smoke, paraffin ingestion by toddlers, actually, the very issues the women were coming to discuss.

My thoughts also went to those who are condemned, eighteen years after they were promised good housing in the new "free" South Africa, to exist in shacks that cannot keep the warmth in or the cold out. I thought about the young babies, the elderly and those who live with conditions such as AIDS and tuberculosis. I simply cannot begin to understand how they feel on a day like this and am sure that many will long for the end!

Eventually, we had all the women together and whisked them away to the warmth of our Children's Embassy. I was asked to set the scene for the discussions that then continued all morning. It was very clear that for these brave, inspiring, desperate women, all the talking must now give way to positive action. They are not calling for the destructive direct action seen in many townships, which merely transfers the blame and responsibility to others, but were intent on finding the small, almost microscopic actions they can take today, tomorrow and everyday, until they see them join together to transform the way children are being raised.

Even the South African government has failed thus far to deliver the homes they promised, so, as a small organisation, we could not even begin to do so. However, by supporting these women, we can create a movement of change which may not remove the shacks any time soon, but will at least render them as safe and secure as possible.

I am not prepared to argue with the wisdom of King Solomon - far from it; we do need many advisers, including these women, and even more so, the children in their care, so the talking will continue, but it is now time to ditch meaningless talking shops, and create genuine "work" shops which always produce positive change.

Ah, ha ha ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive!

It is cold today in Munsieville. It’s a little inconvenient for me because when I came from London a few days ago, I packed a couple of jumpers, but neither are really warm enough to fend off the icy blast of the frozen winds blowing across the higher plains of Gauteng Province. Inconvenient, but not exactly life-threatening, because I will get into my car, drive fifteen minutes to Key West Mall in Krugersdorp, and buy something more adequate.

Poverty is many things, but perhaps most damaging of all is that it removes choice altogether or exchanges it with dread dilemmas. I have the choice of sitting huddled up to the radiator in my room, or popping into the lounge at the nearby Sterkfontein Heritage Lodge to sit in front of their roaring log fire. Or I could choose to stay cold, knowing that it will just be a temporary discomfort. But no, I will exercise my choice, and transfer a few Rand from my credit card to Edgars menswear department and walk out snug – problem solved. I have choice!

But this is a bad day for many in Munsieville, and millions in others in informal settlements across South Africa. They also have a choice today. They can either suffer the freezing bitterness of this sudden cold snap and hope for the best, or they can turn to the available methods of heating their shack homes in the knowledge that by tonight, their home could well be reduced to ashes, or their children and old people could be dead from carbon monoxide, or have choked on acrid smoke.

As I write this blog post, countless people in the township are frantically striving, not for a better future, but just for survival. Frail elderly people; people living with AIDS whose immune systems are shot; babies born just hours ago – and those who care for them, locked into a battle just to cope with temperatures that would scarcely draw a comment in London or New York.

Many will light coal fires in buckets and place them in the door of their shack. Others will use light fires of wood inside their homes. A few may dare to climb to overhead power lines to steal electricity through un-insulated wires fed through their tin roofed shack to feed rusty, deadly appliances. Others will burn paraffin on stoves set on rickety stands so easily knocked over by toddlers playing in the darkness of the tiny living space of their home.

The South African government estimates that 3,000 people die each year from paraffin-related accidents alone, with many times that number dying in fires caused by other factors. Over 80,000 children, twenty-three percent of whom are under three year of age, are poisoned or injured by paraffin annually!

Cold weather may be inconvenient to many of us, but it is killer in the townships, villages and informal settlements of South Africa. That is why shack safety has become such an important focus in our quest to help create safe communities where even the most vulnerable children can grow into healthy, productive adults.

Rusting shacks will never be ideal places to raise children but, with the extent of the housing crisis in Africa, it is hard to see a time when they will no longer exist. But our passion is to demonstrate that when householders take responsibility for their children, there are many simple, low cost ways of making them safe, eliminating many dangers and reducing other risks.

Our partner, GlaxoSmithKline, is working shoulder-to-shoulder with us and the Munsieville community to introduce a far-reaching transformation which changes the culture that tolerates dangerous living conditions. At the end of 2011, a team from the company helped launch the campaign and is returning at the end of 2012 for another high-profile, community-wide initiative to raise awareness of the risks and introduce families to the positive choices they have. Also, Daphne Van, who works with GSK in Canada , is now on loan from the company, working tirelessly to engage the community, change attitudes and identify the specific areas most likely to lead to rapid and sustained change.

On days like this, the people of Munsieville need heat. May the day soon arrive then they are no longer compelled to dice with death just to stay warm!

Home is Where the Heart is

The tragic story of the the family in Munsieville recently burned out of their shack home (http://projecthopeukmunsieville.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/homeless-in-munsieville.html), highlights once again, so many of the challenges facing the community of this and other South African townships. Once more, the importance of The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville is graphically demonstrated.

The family is typical of many within Munsieville: a mixed, extended family quite different from the western "norm"; Grandma and Grandpa, three grandsons, one of whom is an orphan and the other two placed with their grandparents because their own parents can no longer care for them; and then a lodger from their home village (possibly related), given sanctuary by this compassionate family.  They all lived together in their decrepit two-room tin shack, squeezed between others on the rocky hillside of the exposed informal settlement (squatter camp). Similar, grandparent-led households are common in Munsieville, often reflecting the desperate reality of families where parents have been lost to AIDS, and poverty-driven migration.

At a time of life when most look forward to taking life just a little easier, loving grandparents like these are forced to rise to the biggest challenge of their lives. Extra mouths to feed; growing numbers to house in their tiny, freezing shack (this is winter in South Africa); all at a time when their own health may be failing. The South African Constitution affords them many "rights", but so often, these are at best aspirational, as resources are thin and the "safety net" is thread bear and moth-eaten, inadequate for the vast needs of this mineral-rich nation.

Over the past decade, international NGOs and western governments have turned their back on the apparently wealthy Gauteng Province, focusing their efforts on the poorer rural areas on Limpopo, Kwazulu Natal and Eastern Cape, but the reality is that for years, there has been mass migration from the rural villages to the peri-urban areas surrounding the major cities like Johannesburg. The poverty of the villages has transferred to the informal settlements - there are now approaching two hundred of
them around Johannesburg alone.

The family at the centre of this desperate story illustrate so many of the facets of the problems facing South Africa:

1) They have come to the settlement from elsewhere in a search for the illusive "better life". Then others from their village have followed them, including the man who allegedly destroyed their home, threatening their lives.
2) They lived in an awful, cramped shack, incapable of keeping out the rain, the cold, the rats and any intruder that decides to enter. Though the loss of the shack is a catastrophe for the family, it did contain many major threats to the safety and security of the children and absolutely no privacy. (One of the most important initiatives currently being implemented by The Thoughtful Path programme is to improve the safety of all shacks, for the sake of the children being raised within them).
3) The threat of violence and abuse to children living in these situations often comes from within the household - abuse by strangers is comparatively rare. One in five children reports personal experience of serious abuse. In this case, sexual abuse is not being alleged, but it is alleged that the children were specifically included in the death threat to the family by the lodger who, it is claimed, was responsible for burning down the home. (Project HOPE UK is taking a leading role this week in Child Protection Week in Munsieville - campaigning to make the township a zero-tolerance place for abuse and abusers).
4) With few available jobs, and mass unemployment amongst shack-dwellers, poverty bites hard. This family faces an enormous challenge to re-establish their home. Economic activity has to increase, so the Thoughtful Path Community Strengthening Hub is vital, promoting savings and micro-credit, small enterprise and active involvement in the community of local employers, so they can see the benefits of employing those who have most to gain from working hard.
5) Orphans and other vulnerable children need somewhere to turn when they are in crisis. Already traumatised by the loss of parents and then subjected to an arson attack and possible attempted murder, at least the children in this story have the care of loving grandparents. Many do not - there are many child-led orphan households in Munsieville. (Since December 2011, all children have the benefit of a place to run in an emergency - the Munsieville Children's Embassy. And soon, there will be a 24/7 crisis line based at the Children's Embassy, so services can be mobilised in minutes to support and protect the most needy children in the community).

The driving passion of the Thoughtful Path: Munsieville is that all children be afforded the opportunity to grow into health, productive adults. The recent events for this family illustrated just how difficult it is right now for many to receive that opportunity. But, little by little, step by step, together we are building a future of hope for children in the township and beyond.

Big Boys Don't Cry

In their classic 1975 hit, "I'm Not In Love", 10cc whispered "big boys don't cry". Well, after a meeting with the Early Childhood Development Hub of the Thoughtful Path: Munsieville yesterday, I discovered that they were either completely wrong, or I am not a big boy after all!

A tragic story of an event this week in an unregulated pre-school creche has lodged itself firmly in my heart, filling me with fresh determination to hasten reforms in the South African township so that terrible abuse, whether deliberate or caused by ignorance, is eradicated. I don't mind admitting that, not for the first time, I have wept for Munsieville.

Lizzie, Chairperson of the ECD Hub reported to a hushed meeting that a four-month-old baby had died a few days ago on the lap of the lone-operator of a creche. Apparently, she had held the child's nose closed as she attempted to force a portion of "pap" (a thick porridge of ground maize) into his tiny mouth. The baby died of asphyxiation!

If this was an isolated case, it would be bad enough, but it is common for children to suffer serious injury and death in townships across South Africa, at the hands of those entrusted with their care. It is not that the country has inadequate laws and regulations to protect children; the problem is such an acute lack of resources that Munsieville's 50,000+ population, with its 10,600 orphans and other vulnerable children, has just one social worker for only one day each week. She has vast experience and masses of compassion, but she is also completely some overwhelmed. She dare not even visit some of the worst pre-school cheches; if she did, she would be compelled to close them down, which could leave hundreds of children in even more danger of neglect.

But, tragic though the death of this baby is for his family and the whole community, giant strides are being made by the Thoughtful Path ECD Hub. Already, ten creche operators, with no previous training, have passed through the first stages of an accredited two-year "level 4" ECD training course and are introducing improvements to every aspect of the care they provide to children. Another two are currently undergoing their initial eight-week basic training and a further eight have been enrolled and will start their training as places become available over the next few weeks. And on top of this, we have just received funding to train a further twenty community members from the township, equipping them with the latest internationally-acclaimed ECD training techniques and teaching them to support caregivers in the community to deliver all the many advantages of early childhood development to pre-schoolers in the home, massively extending the reach of the programme.

The good news does not stop there! We now have everything in place to launch a full-time Health Promotion Unit, to support the ECD Hub and the other six Hubs of the Thoughtful Path in promoting the health of the children with whom they work. The team will cover medical, public/community health and mental health and well-being issues and will give a huge boost to the campaign to overcome the ignorance that led to the death of the baby earlier this week.

And another cause for great optimism is the progress of our Child Rights and Protection Hub which is striving towards the launch of a "Emergency Response" service for children at risk in the township, based at our newly-opened "Munsieville Children's Embassy" and partnering with all local support agencies, some of which have excellent services to which the vulnerable children desperately need access. A generous UK donor has just agreed funding that will allow us to develop a 24/7 Emergency Response service, accessible by every child in the community whenever they, or those caring for them, need help.

So, my tears mingle with those of the family of this precious little life snuffed out at just four months, but they are eased by the sensational progress being made by this wonderful community to make theirs the best place in Africa to raise a child. And together, we can make it happen!

Beyond the Tipping Point

Two years ago I had a number of conversations with my friend Martin Lafontaine about "tipping points" (Martin was volunteering with Project HOPE UK in Munsieville at the time). We would sit together having a meal at the end of a long day in Munsieville dreaming of the day when bringing this great new concept to birth would no longer feel like pushing a giant boulder up a mountainside, because it had now reached the place where it would roll forward through its own inner momentum.

Over the past three months, The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville has, in many ways, reached a crucial tipping point! More and more people, both locally and from around the world, have seen the importance of the project and joined forces with us to realise its true potential. Our Children's Embassy has opened, making a huge statement to the community. The House of Young Ambassadors has been launched, placing children at the heart of the process of delivering change. And the Thoughtful Path Leadership Academy is steadily equipping the emerging "movers and shakers" of the township as agents of transformation. As we welcome the programme's new-found momentum, we also recognise that it needs to be maintained and managed. A boulder rolling uncontrolled down a hill can be very destructive! And what happens when the boulder comes to rest at the foot of the mountain? Is that it?

The energy of pushing, shoving, influencing, advocating and cajoling to bring The Thoughtful Path to where it is today has been shared with a number of incredible people who, over the past two years, have come as volunteers and interns to the project. The recent, highly-significant push, leading to the "tipping point" has been made possible because the efforts of our permanent team have been multiplied by the sheer professionalism, passion, sacrifice and perseverance of Carola Michielsen from Holland, Alyson Krucher from the USA, and a band of 11 doctors, nurses and health and safety professionals, all of whom were gifted to us by our corporate partner, GlaxoSmithKline.

But the fact that all except Alyson have now finished their assignments (and Alyson only has another week in Munsieville), poses a couple of very important questions: will the current momentum of the project simply peter out? Will the good things they have initiated be sustained?

Well, in all honestly, it would be imprudent to answer definitively. Clearly, in the harsh reality of an undeveloped South African township, only the strongest and best ideas survive. "Good" is never enough; only "great" will cut it! But, where the activities of these and other volunteers succeed, there is always evidence of much "sitting under the mango tree" with the local community. And none of the volunteers has just whisked through Munsieville like the Lone Ranger - they have all planned well, felt the Munsieville "vibe", listened to the community, and worked, not to deliver change, but to equip the local community to deliver change!.

Project HOPE UK has benefitted from our volunteers and interns more than words could ever adequately describe, and we want all these friends to stay engaged. They all have so much more to offer. That's why earlier this week, we launched our "Directors' Circle". This is an invited group of special friends of The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville, who have expressed their desire to stay with us until we see the project reach its objective of being an influential, world-class model of excellence in community-based care of orphans and other vulnerable children. Now we have strengthened our support-base with a growing band of trusted advisors and consultants, all of whom have first-hand knowledge of the project, so they can comment from a position of real understanding.

Yes, it has taken supreme effort to bring The Thoughtful Path to the tipping point. But now, as momentum builds, the Directors' Circle will mean that progress is controlled and maintained. After all, to succeed in Munsieville, we will need to reach many more tipping points along the path!

View from The Appalachians

IT IS NOT HARD TO SEE THE ATTRACTION OF JOHNSON CITY, Tennessee, USA, especially in what Americans call “the fall”. The bright, optimistic, energetic city nestles between the tree-covered Appalachian mountains, boldly displaying the full panoply of rich autumn colours. The air is clean, rivers full and the bears, like the people, have a spirit of enquiry, sometimes venturing from their safe haven to investigate the riches beyond.

I am writing this blog from Dulles International Airport, Washington DC, en route for London after a few days as the guest of the Public Health College of East Tennessee State University (ETSU), in Johnson City. And for me, it was an experience far richer that the glorious scenery. I was there to cement friendships with the Dean, Randy Wykoff, Tim Baylor, who does an incredible job in placing students in locations including Munsieville, as part of their studies towards, bachelors, masters or doctoral qualifications, and students like Megan Quinn and Twanda Wadlinton, who have worked with us in the past and become true friends. I was also in town to deliver a public lecture as part of their “Leading Voices in Public Health” series, entitled “The End of Disempowerment and Dependency: Rethinking the Path for Africa’s AIDS Orphans”.

Why do we sometimes limit ourselves to the expected, though, when life blesses us with so many unexpected treasures, too! I fully expected a rewarding experience with the ETSU friends who have already demonstrated their commitment to The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville. What I had not expected was the many new doors of opportunity that opened up with many other parts of the university community.

Meetings with leading charitable foundations in the area; question and answer sessions with students in the Health Administration department; a meeting of minds with the Director of the University’s groundbreaking Graduate Program in Storytelling, to learn more about the evidence of the effectiveness of storytelling in the care of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa; discussions about how we can work with students and faculty to develop targeted garden solutions for South Africa that can be developed so that shack-dwellers can grow specific crops to enhance the health of pregnant women, or under-fives; creative exploration into how to enlist the university’s best brains in the quest for a way to turn the garbage problem of Munsieville (and similar locations) into a resource-enriching opportunity .... it was a rare opportunity to be with a community of people who personify the truism about many Americans that they are people who will strive to discover a 100 ways to make something work, as opposed to a 100 reasons why it won’t!

But (and I am conscious is the irony of using the “B” word in the context of such thrusting optimism!!), such opportunity also presents its challenges. Martin Lafontaine, a good friend and previous volunteer in Munsieville (courtesy of his employers, GlaxoSmithKline), has constantly encouraged me with his belief that The Thoughtful Path would almost inevitably arrive at a “tipping point” – a place where we will no longer feel like we are pushing boulder up a hill, when it will have its own forward momentum. This visit to Johnson City is yet more evidence that if we have not yet reached the tipping point, at least on an operational level we are pretty close. The new and existing ETSU opportunities stack up alongside the invitations and requests coming into our UK offices almost daily, from people and organisations who “get” The Thoughtful Path concept, realise its huge potential for changing the landscape of orphan care in Africa and want to “be the change”. The downside, however, is that the financial and resource tipping point is lagging behind, so the whole management structure supporting the work in Munsieville is creaking at the seams.

I promised that my blog would be an honest, “warts and all” account of the process of creating a new paradigm for the care of Africa’s orphans and other vulnerable children, so hear you have it – on the one side, an avalanche of encouragement from those who can see that what we are doing holds the prospect of providing effective new models that challenge the bankrupt “status quo” of international charitable and governmental programming and replacing it with something that energises destitute local communities to provide transformational change that results in their most vulnerable children having the opportunity to grow into healthy, productive adults. And then on the flip side of the coin, real frustration that lack of human and financial resources mean that we are unable to seize some of the opportunities presented to us.

I am utterly convinced that The Thoughtful Path is the right path. I also believe that we will win and that the financial tipping point will be reached when partners and investors will see that the tiny amount needed to bring this venture to reality is just a drop in the ocean of the massive and sustained returns that such investment will generate. But for now, the struggle remains; the struggle that is akin to that of the leader of a string quartet who sees a percussion section being added, then woodwind, then brass and so on until, unexpectedly, he finds himself conducting a full orchestra, and then two, and then three orchestras .... all trying to play the same symphony.

All I can say is – we urgently need more brass!

Munsieville's BIG Issues

I have attended several meetings in the past week, where the big challenges that hold children back, have been discussed. Business leaders, community representatives, house-holders, pastors and, most important of all, children and young people themselves, all seem to agree on South Africa's BIG FIVE!

Poverty, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, drugs, and booze!

The super-sized beer can pictured here, towering over Betty Nkoana, Manager of The Thoughtful Path: Munsieville and dwarfing the shacks which house destitute families, just about sums up the drink problem of the township. It's massive, highly destructive and pervades every aspect of life in the community.

I once described alcohol as the cheerful destroyer - making people "merry" as it robs them of of their dignity, their health, their wealth and their future. But, in a place like Munsieville, it appears to go straight for the kill - you rarely see people enjoying the "happy" stage. You just see lives being wrecked; the lives of the drinkers, and the lives of those who share their space. (And in Munsieville's informal shack settlement, sharing space means living as a family in a tin hut with a dirt floor measuring as little as six or seven square meters.)

TIME TO CHOOSE
When Project HOPE UK started its journey down The Thoughtful Path, it was pretty clear that demolishing the walls of the "prison" which prevents the orphans and other vulnerable children of the community from becoming healthy, productive adults, was going to take a very long time. There were no quick-fixes, no short-cuts and no easy solutions. And perhaps most disconcerting of all for us westerners who imaging that if we can fly to the moon we can solve anything, it became abundantly obvious that if the transformation of Munsieville did not come from within the community itself, it would certainly not come from outside!

So, as one who lives, eats and sleeps Munsieville, but only gets to sit down with its people every few weeks, it is so indescribably exciting to see seeds of change germinating and sprouting through the hard crusty ground of this beautiful community, as very ordinary people take extra-ordinary steps on the path to a better future.

The government's strategy for Munsieville over recent years has been to try appeasing the anger of destitute communities by throwing huge sums into high-profile capital projects, like a new sports centre, the opening of which was accompanied by an announcement that from now on, those wanting to hold sports and cultural events for children would have to pay an impossible fee for facilities which had previously been free! In contrast, our strategy is to search for the seeds of change in the lives of the community, and then water them with encouragement, nurture them with mentoring and fertilise them with training.

Like the rest of us, the people of Munsieville are faced with a bewildering array of choices. There are many who continue to choose destructive "solutions" to their pressing problems. There are many who choose to wait for someone else to solve their problems. There are many who choose to stand on the side-lines, probably with a can of Castle Lager in their hands, and jeer at those who choose to be the change that they long for in their community.

And, from what I have seen in the past week, a growing band of people is making that brave decision - a businesswoman in her 80s with a longing to give shack-dwellers the opportunity to create productive enterprises; a fiery group of young adults totally committed to make Munsieville a zero-tolerance location for child abusers; a dozen women who have lived in poverty all their lives who have created "Heart Gardens" as their first step towards self reliance; a growing band of school children diligently constructing a plan to eradicate alcohol and substance misuse amongst their peers!

Another week here in Munsieville has reinforced my belief that even the biggest problems faced by a community start to diminish when people decide to be their own solution.