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Volunteer-run workshops
This Medical Volunteer in HIV & TB Clinics programme focuses heavily on education - it not only educates the volunteers, but it also allows volunteers to (in turn) educate the wider community. Volunteers must design and run workshops – these workshops are mandatory and take place every couple of weeks in community centres, schools and hospitals. The workshops allow volunteers to spread awareness about the various health issues (namely HIV and Aids) that they are surrounded by every day whilst working at the project, and to educate the community about sexual health and how to reduce the risk of infection.
Depending on how long volunteers will be at the project, these HIV/Aids related workshops will be developed for a range of age groups, and volunteers will conduct the workshops in preschools, primary school, high schools and community centres. The end result of these community workshops is that the Project Organisers are able to amass a collection of workshop material that future volunteers and communities can benefit from.
Other Community Initiatives
Volunteers at the Medical Volunteer in HIV & TB Clinics programme are permitted to help out in various community initiatives.
Sinethemba
(means ‘We have hope’ in Zulu) - this is a community centre for local ‘street kids’ (homeless and disadvantaged children and adolescents). As well as being a place for volunteers to conduct their workshops, Sinethemba is also used to mentor the ‘street-kids’ and teach them unimportant life skills.
Mad about art
( this is a community centre that uses art and drama to build awareness about HIV and Aids. The centre is designed to deliver arts-based education that is used as a type of therapy, building confidence for the children and adolescents that attend the centre.
Build a school project
( A project that constructs new schools in townships in South Africa. The Build Our Schools project is a separate volunteering project, however, when the number of volunteers are low, volunteers from other programmes (such as this Medical Volunteer in HIV & TB Clinics programme) help out with the building work on Fridays - digging and taking part in general building work. One of the schools that has benefited from the Build our Schools Project is ‘Siyafunda’ (which means ‘We are learning’) – where roughly 80 children were living in a church until their school was constructed.
Volunteers are also sent to work in mobile health clinics and at a clinic in Kranshoek (that deals specifically with HIV and TB related ailments). At both clinics, volunteers take part in hands-on activities - distributing contraceptives, and helping collect saliva samples from locals that are showing signs of TB – the samples are then sent to the lab for testing. The clinics also allow volunteers to take part in HIV education and counselling (discussing how the disease is transmitted, and how to protect yourself from it).
In order to give volunteers a true sense of the townships that they will be working in, the Project Organisers arrange one-hour Xhosa lessons every Friday afternoon. These language lessons teach volunteers useful phrases and expressions that they can use to communicate with the communities they work with – sharing knowledge about their lives in their prospective countries.
The Project organisers run a ‘Swap-Shop’ three afternoons a week. Volunteers can donate items to help keep the ‘Swap shop’ running. The premise behind the ‘Swap shop’ is that community members (namely children) bring a bag full of recyclable material that is weighed – they are then rewarded with a token representing the weight of the material that they brought. They can then use the token to redeem items from the ‘Swap shop.’
Volunteers at the Medical Volunteer in HIV & TB Clinics programme help run a vegetable garden at the HAART (Highly Active Anti – Retroviral Treatment) clinic at Knysna Provincial Hospital. The garden is an initiative taken by past volunteers to put the grassland around the hospital to good use. The garden is used to produce healthy vegetables (currently cabbage, spinach beetroot and spring onions), which are then distributed to patients attending the HAART clinic, as well as to various soup kitchens
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