Help Children In Care Dream Big

BASIC DESCRIPTION

Give a Child a Family (GCF) is a Public Benefit Organisation that is based in Margate, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. For the past 25 years they have developed and implemented Child Protection. A large percentage of children placed at GCF are neglected, abused, abandoned or removed from their parents due to vulnerability and poverty. The immediate solution to the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children is institutional care, but research, has shown that long term care can have negative outcomes for children placed in institutions (orphanages).

This is why GCF is opposed to long term institutionalized care and they have developed a model of short term residential care for children at our Temporary Place of Safety. Each year 100-120 children are in their care at their Temporary Place of Safety, and they will stay with them for about 9-18 months as they build back their health, resilience and reduce emotional/physical trauma. They do this through our holistic programmes.

• THERAPY AND COUNSELLING - to help children heal
• EDUCATION AND EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT – for children to learn to protect themselves through education
• NUTRITION AND HEALTHY EATING PLANS for children to grow strong and healthy
• HEALTHCARE for children, to acquire and access ARVs, immunisation and good hygiene
• But best of all, GCF gives them love and security, until they find them a new and loving family to place them into…because every child should be in a safe and secure family.
• While the children are recovering they work and train biological families and a Foster Care Programme is implemented which recruits, screens and trains prospective foster parents to ensure that the children have safe and secure families to be placed into once they are ready to be reunited or reintegrated. GCF provides support to families and children for at least two years after placement to ensure the placement is successful for long term family strengthening.

WHY DO I CARE?

I was admitted to GCF when I was six years old, with my baby sister who succumbed to AIDS not so long after we had been admitted. We were orphans and the immediate family couldn't take us in. There were many other children at GCF. I remember that some of them would be very old but would have never been to school so they would join us. We were all put through school in the Temporary Place of Safety and once they could see that you could handle an outside school then you would be taken to an outside school. When I was eight I got introduced to my foster family and eventually went to live with them. GCF did not give up on me then. When I passed for high school I had passed really well and GCF felt that I deserved to go to a good school instead of the rural schools. My foster family couldn't afford the high school so GCF took over the load of putting me through boarding school and making sure my school needs were taken care of.
Now I am an adult with my own little family and when I heard that GCF was short R200 000 this year in order to make sure the children in their care get an education my heart broke. If GCF struggles to help those vulnerable children, who else will help them? I believe it is up to us to help GCF continue the work they do.

PLEASE!

Most children who admitted to GCF are developmentally delayed due to not receiving the required or desired foundation-phased education, or have never even been to school before.
With your help, we can give them the tools to start building on their future goals and dreams. We can give them HOPE for a better life! Your donation will go towards school trips, books, stationery, lunch boxes, school uniforms and anything else they might need to further their development, like remedial or therapeutic assistance.

Let's give them hope, let's give them a future, let's help them DREAM BIG!