Lesedi la Batho Social Relief Fund, South Africa

Social relief report due 16 February 2024

Lending a helping hand

It’s a new year and everyone is making new years resolutions. Our team’s new year’s resolution was to make the lives of our community members better by decreasing their burden through social relief initiatives.

Our outreach team embarked on a back-to-school drive for 2024, purchasing and distributing school uniform and stationery as an effort to ease the burden on parents to take this huge cost at once while enabling the little ones to attend school without concerns on what they will wear and write with at school.

The saying goes that it takes a village to raise a child; this is true with Reginah Sekoboane. Reginah is a single parent who has taken the responsibility of raising three of her brother’s children after they were abandoned by both their parents. Ms. Sekoboane received support from our social worker to have access to the children’s child social support grant., She further received school shoes for one of her children who was on the verge of facing suspended from school due to wearing inappropriate shoes to school.

They say blood is thicker than water, however it is not the case for a young mother with twin babies.

After feeling pressure, lack of support and unloved from her family, Tebogo Khensani wanted to commit suicide however our social worker got hold of the information on time and rushed to provide psycho-social support to Tebogo. During the sessions, our social worker discovered that Tebogo had registered to study Law at the University of Fort Hare but due to the toxic relationship at home was on the verge of giving it all up and more.

We assisted Tebogo with mediation between her, her family as well as her children’s parental family. Even though her family showed no interest of rebuilding their relationship, her partner’s family were rallying behind her to succeed and even offered to take care of their grandchildren while Tebogo goes and chase her dream for a better future for her and her children. After seeing hope she also reconsidered her plans to go fulfill her dreams to continue with her studies. We assisted her with transportation to the University of Fort Hare, food parcel and toiletry. Tebogo continues to receive psych-social support from our social worker telephonically.

The Simelane Siblings had not registered their birth with the Department of Home Affairs and as a result they did not have birth certificates. The family reached out to our school implementation team for help when the eldest sister was due to write her matric examinations which required an Identity document which she did not have. Upon the one-on-one consultations our team discovered that all six siblings had not registered their births. The team assisted the five siblings with registering their births and obtaining birth certificate while the eldest received her identity documentation.