SOZ: Support for Orphans in Zimbabwe

Island Hospice has been offering therapeutic group work and support in the Harare suburb of Mufakose to 20 bereaved children, and their guardians. The group work activities focused on assisting the children to process their losses, and the guardians were supported in their difficult task of caring for these vulnerable children. Of major sadness to both guardians and children was their inability to attend school, owing to unavailability of funds. Through the funds from Global Giving, the fees for a few of the children were paid. This intervention had an enormous impact on the sponsored children who were able to derive purpose, hope and esteem from attending school. In removing this obstacle of disappointment, they have been freed to more fully process their losses during the therapeutic group work. The observation has emphasized the benefits of twinning of clinical group work with other practical interventions (funds permitting).

Hello to all our wonderful supporters and herewith a report on the last 6 months of Islands SOZ Support for Orphans in Zimbabwe project.

Thanks to your support, we have been able to work with orphans and their guardians in 3 different communities, with the majority of the guardians being over 60 years of age. These tend to be grandparents struggling with the responsibility of their children’s children in terms of school fees, uniforms, medications, feeding and of course their emotional daily care. The majority of these orphans are also HIV+.

One of our guardians is a grandmother who now is responsible for the 15 orphans of her 3 deceased daughters. She is exhausted permanently with the constant visits to the clinic, reminding the children about their ARV’s (that we managed to access free from a donor project) and the ongoing demands of caring for 15 children aged between 6 and 13. In an attempt to address all of these children needs , Island networks with other agencies that provide services that we do not.

This grandmother reports that both the individual counseling and our community support group are extremely helpful. What we are seeing in general is hugely improved communications between the guardians and the children they are caring for. They confirm that they are finding it easier to talk to the children about their illness, their status and why they have to take medication.