THE FUTURE
We plan to intensify on the services we offer:
- HIV/AIDS program: we need a full time counselor. We currently do not have a counselor, all counseling is done by the doctor and the nurse. The doctor goes out 3 times a week to the communities with the nurse and care givers. This leaves the clinic devoid of human resource. We are planning on having this counselor so that s/he continues the counseling services when the team is out.
- Primary health care: our primary health care focuses on the poor unprivileged group of the society. We strive to ensure that health care is reachable to all people’s group and culture irrespective of socio economic status. Our mobile goes to the deep rural areas 3 times a week. In order to maximize our services to the people, we are planning on having the ff :
- Portable ultra sound: this is mainly to ensure that the pregnant women we see out there who sometimes go to term without a single visit to the doctor let alone a scan. Having a portable scan(ultra sound) will assist these pregnant women in the villages, to ensure that they have at least one scan per pregnancy to avoid complications.
- CD 4 count machine: we take our specimen to the local hospital lab for testing, the results take time to come back because of the load. Having our own CD4 count machine will assist in the close monitoring of our HIV patients, they won’t have to wait long for their results.
- Gazebo and foldable chairs: for outreaches, they will be our waiting area (because the mobile is too small) so that our patients won’t have to wait outside in the open.
- A portable photo copying/printer machine: for filing purposes. As much as the mobile serves the rural communities, we do find teachers, nurses etc. who stay in those areas and have medical aid card cards but still don’t have access to transport, so we do found ourselves having to open files (photocopying identity documents and medical aid cards etc.) in the mobile, currently we come to the office with their documents and return them the next day (our communities are +- an hour radius from our office). This is of curse time consuming and uneconomical.
- Stretcher boards(zip stretcher), suction machine, oxygen cylinder: our clinic is in a construction site, a school building , surrounded by factories, we need such equipment in cases of trauma management, thank God so far we only had minor injuries and trauma that only needed bandages, but we must be equipped for the worst.
- Medicines: from the consultation fee that we started charging in July, we are hoping to grow to be a self sustained ministry sooner, i.e. being able to pay for our overheads and also buy medicines, we have not arrived there as yet, we are still struggling to pay our employees, we are still praying on hoping for continued funding for the medications even next year.
- Poverty alleviation program: we build self-sustained projects that will take our people out of poverty. We will continue with the agriculture co-ops including live- stock farming, the bead and sewing project and we adding the cooking and baking project and hair dressing(salon). We first identify skill, then we train the group on basic business principles, we then give them a startup cash for the project, we monitor and manage them until they are capacitated enough to run on their own, we arrange market for them, they give 15% profit to the church, this is to ensure sustainability. Currently we are still managing the agriculture co-operative and the bead and sewing project, we are hoping to wean these groups and start others early next year. Each member of the co-op has the obligation to teach other 2 interested and passionate members the skills. S/he has. Passionate and a teachable spirit is key in these projects, if find lack of commitment or laziness from the beneficiaries, we substitute such a member .
- Orphans and vulnerable group: vulnerable group means abused and neglected children(although parents are still alive), elderly headed homes(geriatrics), mentally incapacitated and abused women. In the Eastern there is highest number of this group of people, orphans due to HIV and AIDS, neglect (due to high level of alcohol and drug use), where parents neglect their children to stay in a shebeen, even misuse the children’s grant money. These children end up staying alone or with grandparents who are too old to take care of the children. Corruption is also a problem here, there are people(sometimes relatives, sometimes community members) who arrange grants from government for these orphans but never give the money to them. The strategy we use is that, after receiving reports from our care givers each year, we then do a thourough problem analysis with the assistance of social workers, those whose money is taken away by relatives, we channel it back to them, and those in need for help we provide for them like buying of school uniforms, food parcels for the homes in crisis, etc.
- With regards to school uniforms, we plan to supply 100 school uniforms per year(this is done every year by Rucc Members), food parcel has gone down to 36 per year(3 per month) because we have stopped the blanket supply of food parcels and only concentrate on those with crisis(the ill and orphans with no form of income or food supply who manifest signs of food deprivation) we then plant vegie gardens for them and then teach them how to tender them.
- This year in July, we have started a project of providing shelter for the homeless. Our beneficiaries are those who live in trying conditions, have no income or are living in a combined income of less than R7.00 a day. We have started with the church members in this category, we will move on to supply the rest of the communities as resources allow. We target to build minimum 4 homes a year(one per 4 months). Each home costs +- R 285 00 incl built-in furniture(breakdown attached).
- Clean water supply: we provide boreholes in communities where there absolutely no water. At the present the need far outweighs our resources because boreholes are expensive. We plan to drill at least 4 boreholes a year at the least. We are also faced up with a challenge of dead water system that needs revival. These water systems were put in place by the government of the homelands in the deep rural areas, the present municipality hasn’t done much to revive them despite promptings. We were about to drill a borehole for instance, in Qoba location where we have also assisted with agriculture co-operative, we found out that there is a dead water system which use to serve 5 big communities, we thought instance of drilling this one borehole that serves one community, how about we revise the water system and put an electric pump, though it works out to be about R70 000 more expensive than the boreholes(see attached financial quotes), it will be more profitable to revive that water system. We are hoping to have funding for this particular water system
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- Life style modification: we will continue with awareness campaigns and health talks (clinics), nutrition program, sports and exercise. With the exercise program we plan to have a gymnasium on site, both for the health of the community and as an income generating project, where we will charge minimal fee for the gymnasium
- Trainings and capacity building: we assess training need as the year progress. Currently we are focusing on equipping the co-operatives on business management, basic agriculture, beading and sewing, catering as a business, sanitation and hygiene. Evangelism, leadership trainings , counseling, home based care, sanitation and hygiene, childhood nutrition are ongoing trainings every year. In this department we are currently in need of a projector and screen. We were previously using the churches, but now they have been fixed and they can’t be moved to different venues.
- We are building a step down facility in January 2012, for use in 2013
- We trusting God for the step down unit equipment and a patient vehicle
- We are planning to build churches, schools, skills and youth centers in the rural areas where we serve, one at a time (we have started building church halls).
- We are renovating old buildings to use for community health centers and clinic