MaAfrika Tikkun, a South African NGO working primarily with orphans and other vulnerable children and home-based caregivers, partnered with Lifeline Energy in 2004 to provide 300 radios to orphans and vulnerable children in the Gauteng and Western Cape provinces of South Africa. The children lived in peri-urban shack settlements and were faced with daily hardships including poverty, disease, substance abuse, domestic violence and poor infrastructure.
Through providing access to information, the radios supported MaAfrika Tikkun’s work in palliative home-based care, orphan care, early childhood development and life skills training during after-school informal educational activities. The radios offered opportunity to form listening groups and to discuss issues pertinent to them allowing them to make informed decisions.
For many orphans and vulnerable children, with the violence that currently exists in townships in South Africa, our radios provided them with factual information, enabling them to make informed decisions. Vulnerable children in South Africa are starved for information and rely on the voice in the radio to share with them the daily happenings around them.