Support 500 vulnerable South African children

Becoming a mom when you’re still almost a child yourself is incredibly tough. For girls who get pregnant in high school and the years right after school, it’s difficult to tell what the next few months and years will look like.

Rays of Hope recently started a Young Moms’ Support Group, specifically for teen moms in Alexandra under the age of 20 years. This is a safe space in a non-judgmental environment where the young moms are respected and loved.

They get the opportunity to talk about changing plans, finishing school, career paths, finances, relationships, friendships and more. Most importantly they talk about how to bond and relate to their children. We aim to help them become a generation of great mothers.

We are especially excited about a partnership with Save The Children who will be running a course called “Positive Parenting” with the group. This will give them the right foundations on which to raise their children, despite, in all likelihood, not having good role-models. 

Thanks to your support, Rays of Hope is able to support young moms and give them a strong foundation on which to raise their children. We truly appreciate your partnership!

Growing up in Alexandra Township under challenging circumstances is very difficult, and even more so if you are an orphan. Nokubonga*, a 19-year-old young woman, lost her mother during the hard lockdown in 2020, and was left to fend for her four siblings, the youngest being just one year and two months old.

At the age of 19, Nokubonga had becaome a surrogate mother with no parenting skills. She had to care for and protect her siblings, do all the cleaning, cooking, washing, bathing of her siblings and adjust to a lifestyle change, from teenager to parenthood, overnight. She had to drop out of school when her mother fell ill and still yearns to complete her final year of school.

Nokubonga has faced numerous new challenges since then, including no longer receiving her mother’s grant money, nor her own child grant, as she is over 18. The shack that they live in, located next to the Jukskei River, is small and currently accommodates eight people – her aunt also moved in with her two children. The shack floods with water whenever it rains and the river bank threatens to wash away underneath them.

Rays of Hope took Nokubonga and her siblings into the Ithemba Labantwana programme in October 2020 and has been supporting the siblings with home visits to check how they are coping, providing counselling, food parcels and clothes, and taking them to school. The programme is now in the process of building them a proper house away from the river. Like any other child, Nokubonga has big dreams about her life and wishes to achieve them. She has every potential – and the ambition – to do something great with her life, and it is with the support from people like you, that this will be possible.

Thank you for supporting these vulnerable children and restoring hope to this family, through the most difficult time.

*Not her real name

Links:

• Read our February newsletter